The justification of the good; an essay on moral philosophy

CONSTABLE'S RUSSIAN LIBRARY UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF
STEPHEN GRAHAM

CONSTABLE'S RUSSIAN LIBRARY

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTIONS
BY STEPHEN GRAHAM.

THE SWEET-SCENTED NAME

By FEDOR SOLOGUB

WAR AND CHRISTIANITY:
THREE CONVERSATIONS

By VLADIMIR SOLOVYOF

THE WAY OF THE CROSS

By V. DOROSHEVITCH

A SLAV SOUL, AND OTHER STORIES

By ALEXANDER KUPRIN

THE EMIGRANT

By L. F. DOSTOIEFFSKAYA

THE REPUBLIC OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS,
AND OTHER STORIES

By VALERY BRUSSOF

THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

By VLADIMIR SOLOVYOF

THE JUSTIFICATION
OF THE GOOD

AN ESSAY ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY

'

BY VLADIMIR SOLOVYOF

^ • | » /'V. ^«-.. ..

TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN

BY NATHALIE A. DUDDINGTON, M.A.

WITH A NOTE

BY STEPHEN GRAHAM

LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY LTD.

First Published 1918.

DEDICATED TO
MY FATHER, THE HISTORIAN

SERGEY MIHAILOVITCH SOLOVYOF

AND TO MY GRANDFATHER, THE PRIEST

MIHAIL VASSILYEVITCH SOLOVYOF

WITH A LIVING AND GRATEFUL RECOGNITION
OF AN ETERNAL BOND

EDITOR'S NOTE

IT may be of use to the reader approaching Solovyof for the first
time if I state in an elementary form the ideas to which the
Russian philosopher specially consecrated his life and energies.
They were :

The universal Church, the idea of the unity of Christendom,
and beyond that ultimately the conscious unity of mankind.
Not a world-republic, however, but a world-church.

The evolution of the God-man, not the superman with his
greater earth-sense and fierceness, but the God-man with his
greater heaven-sense, mystical sense.

The Eternal Feminine, a characterisation of all humanity at
one in the mystical body of the Church. Woman as the final
expression of the material world in its inward passivity.

Love as the highest revelation, the gleam of another world
upon our ordinary existence. Love, therefore, as the proof of
immortality, the guerdon and sense of it.

Sancta Sophia, the Heavenly Wisdom, the grand final unity
of praise, the wall of the city of God.

The Justification of the Good is the book in which Solovyof
elucidates the laws of the higher idealism. It is a classical work
of the utmost importance in Russian studies. All that is positive
in modern Russian thought springs from the teaching of Solovyof.
Time is only now coming abreast of him and he appears especially
as the prophet of this era, with his vision of united humanity and
the realisation of the kingdom. All students of thought and
religion, both here and in America, ought to feel indebted to

vii

viii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Mrs. Duddington for the brilliant translation she has done.
Tolstoy we know ; Dostoievsky we know ; and now comes a
new force into our life, Solovyof, the greatest of the three.
Through Solovyof we shall see Russia better and Europe better.

STEPHEN GRAHAM.

THE object of this book is to show the good as truth and righteous-
nessj that is, as the only right and consistent way of life in all
things and to the end, for all who decide to follow it. I mean the
Good as such ; it alone justifies itself and justifies our confidence
in it. And it is not for nothing that before the open grave,
when all else has obviously failed, we call to this essential Good
and say, " Blessed art Thou, O Lord, for Thou hast taught us
Thy justification."

In the individual, national, and historical life of humanity, the
Good justifies itself by its own good and right ways. A moral
philosophy, true to the Good, having discovered these ways in the
past, indicates them to the present for the future.

When, in setting out on a journey, you take up a guide-book^
you seek in it nothing but true, complete, and clear directions with
regard to the route chosen. This book will not persuade you to
go to Italy or Switzerland if you have decided to go to Siberia,
nor will it provide you with money to traverse the oceans if you
can only pay the fare down to the Black Sea.

Moral philosophy is no more than a systematic guide to the
right way of life's journey for men and nations ; the author is
only responsible for his directions being correct, complete, and
coherent. But no exposition of the moral norms — of the con
ditions, i.e. for attaining the true purpose of life— can have any
meaning for the man who consciously puts before him an utterly

x THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

different aim. To indicate the necessary stations on the road to
the better, when the worse has been definitely chosen, is not
merely a useless but an annoying and even insulting thing to do,
for it brings the bad choice back to one's mind, especially when
in our inmost heart the choice is unconsciously and in spite of
ourselves felt to be both bad and irrevocable.

I have not the slightest intention of preaching virtue and
denouncing vice ; I consider this to be both an idle and an immoral
occupation for a simple mortal, since it presupposes an unjust and
proud claim to be better than other people. What matters, from
the point of view of moral philosophy, are not the particular devia
tions from the right way, however great they may be, but only
the general, definite, and decisive choice between two moral paths,
a choice made with full deliberation. The question may be asked
whether every man makes such a choice. It certainly is not made
by people who die in their infancy, and, so far as clear conscious
ness of self is concerned, many grown-up people are not far
removed from babes. Moreover, it should be noted that even
when conscious choice has been made, it cannot be observed from
outside. The distinction of principle between the two paths has
no empirical definiteness^ and cannot be practically defined. I have
seen many strange and wondrous things, but two objects have I
never come across in nature : a man who has finally attained
perfect righteousness, and a man who has finally become utterly
evil. And all the pseudo-mystical cant based upon external and
practically applicable divisions of humanity into the sheep and
the goats, the regenerate and the unregenerate, the saved and the
damned, simply reminds me of the frank words of the miller —

Long have I travelled

And much have I seen,
But copper spurs on water pails

Saw I never ne'en.

At the same time I think of the lectures I heard long ago
at the University on embryology and zoology of the inverte-

PREFACE xi

brate. These lectures enabled me, among other things, to form a
definite conception of the two well-known truths, namely, that
at the lowest stages of organic life no one but a learned biologist,
and sometimes not even he, can distinguish the vegetable from the
animal forms, and that at the early stages of the intra-uterine life
only a learned embryologist can tell, and not always with certainty,
the embryo of man from the embryo of some other creature, often
of a distinctly unpleasant one. It is the same with the history of
humanity and with the moral world. At the early stages the two
paths are very close together, and outwardly indistinguishable.

But why, it will be asked, do I speak with regard to the moral
world, of the choice between two paths only ? The reason is, that
in spite of all the multiplicity of the forms and expressions or
life, one path only leads to the life that we hope for and renders it
eternal. All other paths, which at first seem so like it, lead in the
opposite direction, fatally draw farther and farther away from it,
and finally become merged together in the one path of eternal
death.

In addition to these two paths that differ in principle, some
thinkers try to discover a third path, which is neither good nor
bad, but natural or animal. Its supreme practical principle is best
expressed by a German aphorism, which, however, was unknown
both to Kant and to Hegel : "Jedes Tierchen hat sein Plaisirchen.
This formula expresses an unquestionable truth, and only stands in
need of amplification by another truth, equally indisputable : Allen
Tieren fatal ist zu krepiren. And when this necessary addition
is made, the third path — that of animality made into a principle —
is seen to be reduced to the second path of death.1 It is impos
sible for man to avoid the dilemma, the final choice between the
two paths — of good and of evil. Suppose, indeed, we decide to take
the third, the animal path, which is neither good nor bad, but

1 The pseudo-superhuman path, thrown into vivid light by the madness of the
unhappy Nietzsche, comes to the same thing. See below, Preface to the First
Edition.

xii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

merely natural. It is natural for animals, just because animals do
not decide anything, do not choose between this path and any
other, but passively follow the only one upon which they have
been placed by a will foreign to them. But when man actively
decides to follow the path of moral passivity^ he is clearly guilty of
falsehood, wrong, and sin, and is obviously entering not upon the
animal path, but upon that of the two human paths which proves
in the end, if not at the beginning, to be the path of eternal evil
and death. It is indeed easy to see from the fijst that it is worse
than the animal path. Our younger brothers are deprived of
reason, but they undoubtedly possess an inner sense ; and although
they cannot consciously condemn and be ashamed of their nature
and its bad, mortal way, they obviously suffer from it ; they long
for something better which they do not know but which they
dimly feel. This truth, once powerfully expressed by St. Paul
(Rom. viii. 19-23), and less powerfully repeated by Schopen
hauer, is entirely confirmed by observation. Never does a human
face bear the expression of that profound, hopeless melancholy
which, for no apparent reason, overshadows sometimes the faces
of animals. It is impossible for man to stop at the animal self-
satisfaction, if only because animals are not in the least self-satisfied.
A conscious human being cannot be an animal, and, whether he will
or no, he must choose betweeji two paths. He must either become
higher and better than his material nature, or become lower and
worse than the animal. And the essentially human attribute
which man cannot be deprived of consists not in the fact that he
becomes this or that, but in the fact that he becomes. Man gains
nothing by slandering his younger brothers and falsely describing
as animal and natural the path of diabolical persistence in the
wrong — the path which he himself has chosen, and which is
opposed both to life and to nature.

What I most desired to show in this book is the manner in
which the one way of the Good, while remaining true to itself,

PREFACE xiii

and, consequently, justifying itself, grows in completeness and
definiteness as the conditions of the historical and natural environ
ment become more complex. The chief claim of my theory is to
establish in and through the unconditional principle of morality
the complete inner connection between true religion and sound
politics. It is a perfectly harmless claim, since true religion
cannot force itself upon any one, and politics are free to be as
unsound as they like — at their own risk, of course. At the same
time moral philosophy makes no attempt to guide particular
individuals by laying down any external and absolutely definite
rules of conduct. If any passage in the book should strike the
reader as 'moralising' he will find that either he has misunder
stood my meaning or that I did not express myself with sufficient
clearness.

But I have done my best to be clear. While preparing this
second edition I read the book over five times in the course of
nine months, every time making fresh additions, both small and
great, by way of explanation. Many defects of exposition still
remain, but I hope they are not of such a nature as to lay me
open to the menace, " Cursed is he who doeth the work of God
with negligence."

Whilst I was engaged in writing this book I sometimes ex
perienced moral benefit from it ; perhaps this is an indication that
the book will not be altogether useless for the reader also. If this
should be the case it will be enough to justify this 'justification
of the good.'

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOF.

Moscow, December 8, 1898.

SOLOVYOF'S
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

A PRELIMINARY CONCEPTION OF THE MORAL MEANING
OF LIFE

Is there any meaning in life ? If there is, is that meaning moral
in character, and is its root in the moral sphere ? In what does
it consist, and what is the true and complete definition of it ?
These questions cannot be avoided, and there is no agreement
with regard to them in modern consciousness. Some thinkers
deny all meaning to life, others maintain that the meaning of life
has nothing to do with morality, and in no way depends upon our
right or good relation to God, men, and the world as a whole ;
the third admit the importance of the moral norms for life, but
give conflicting definitions of them, which stand in need of analysis
and criticism.

Such analysis cannot in any case be dismissed as unnecessary.
At the present stage of human consciousness the few who already
possess a firm and final solution of the problem of life for themselves
must justify it for others. /An intellect which has overcome its
own doubts does not render the heart indifferent to the delusions
of others.

I

Some of those who deny the meaning of life are in earnest
about it, and end by taking the practical step of committing
suicide. Others are not in earnest, and deny the meaning of life
solely by means of arguments and pseudo-philosophic systems. I

xvi THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

am certainly not opposed to arguments and systems, but I am
referring to men who regard their philosophising as a thing on its
own account^ which does not bind them to any concrete actions or
demand any practical realisation. These men and their intellectual
exercises cannot be taken seriously. Truths like the judgment
that the angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles
remain true quite independently of the person who utters them
and of the life he leads ; but a pessimistic valuation of life is not
a mathematical truth — it necessarily includes the personal, sub
jective attitude to life. When the theoretical pessimist affirms
as a real objective truth that life is evil and painful, he thereby
expresses his conviction that this is so for every one^ including
himself. In that case, why does he go on living and enjoying
the evil of life as though it were a good ? It is sometimes urged
that instinct compels us to live in spite of the rational conviction
that life is not worth living. But this appeal to instinct is vain.
Instinct is not an external mechanically compelling force, but is
an inner condition which prompts every living creature to seek
certain states which appear to it to be pleasant or desirable. The
fact that in virtue of his instinct the pessimist finds pleasure in
life seems to undermine the basis of his pseudo-rational conviction
that life is evil and painful. He may say that the pleasures of life
are illusory. What, however, can be the meaning of these words
from his point of view ? If one recognises the positive meaning
of life many things may be dismissed as illusory in comparison, as
drawing our attention away from the chief thing. St. Paul could
say that by comparison with the kingdom of heaven, which is
won through a life of renunciation, all carnal affections and
pleasures are as dung and rubbish in his eyes. But a pessimist
who does not believe in a kingdom of heaven, and attaches no
positive significance to a life of renunciation, can have no standard
for distinguishing illusion from truth.

From this point of view everything is reduced to the state of
pleasure or of pain which is being actually experienced ; but no

PREFACE xvii

pleasure while it is being experienced can be an illusion. The
only way to justify pessimism on this low ground is childishly to
count the number of pleasures and pains in human life, assuming
all the time that the latter are more numerous than the former,
and that, therefore, life is not worth living. This calculus of
happiness could only have meaning if arithmetical sums of pleasures
and pains actually existed, or if the arithmetical difference between
them could itself become a sensation ; since, however, in actual
reality sensations exist only in the concrete, it is as absurd to
reckon them in abstract figures as to shoot at a stone fortress with
a cardboard gun. If the only motive for continuing to live is to
be found in the surplus of the pleasurable over the painful sensa
tions, then for the vast majority of men this surplus is a fact :
men live and find that life is worth living. With them, no doubt,
must be classed such theoreticians of pessimism who talk of the
advantages of non-existence, but in reality prefer any kind of
existence. Their arithmetic of despair is merely a play of mind
which they themselves contradict, finding, in truth, more pleasure
than pain in life, and admitting that it is worth living to the end.
From comparing their theory with their practice one can only
conclude that life has a meaning and that they involuntarily sub
mit to it, but that their intellect is not strong enough to grasp
that meaning.

Pessimists who are in earnest and commit suicide also involun
tarily prove that life has a meaning. I am thinking of conscious
and self-possessed suicides, who kill themselves because of disap
pointment or despair. They supposed that life had a certain
meaning which made it worth living, but became convinced that
that meaning did not hold good. Unwilling to submit passively
and unconsciously — as the theoretical pessimists do — to a different
and unknown meaning, they take their own life. This shows, no
doubt, that they have a stronger will than the former, but proves
nothing as against the meaning of life. These men failed to
discover it, but what did they seek it in ? There are two types

b

xviii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

of passionate men among them : the passion of some is purely
personal and selfish (Romeo, Werther), that of others is connected
with some general interest which, however, they separate from
the meaning of existence as a whole (Cleopatra, Cato of Utica).
Neither the first nor the second care to know the meaning of
universal life, although the meaning of their own existence
depends upon it. Romeo killed himself because he could not
have Juliet. The meaning of life for him was to possess that
woman. If, however, this really were the meaning of life, it
would he wholly irrational. In addition to Romeo forty thousand
gentlemen might find the meaning of their life in possessing that
same Juliet, so that this supposed meaning would forty thousand
times contradict itself. Allowing for difference in detail, we find
the same thing at the bottom of every suicide : life is not what in
my opinion it ought to be, therefore life is senseless and is not worth
living. The absence of correspondence between the arbitrary
demands of a passionate nature and the reality is taken to be the
result of some hostile fate, terrible and senseless, and a man kills
himself rather than submit to this blind force. It is the same thing
with persons belonging to the second type. The queen of Egypt,
conquered by the world-wide power of Rome, would not take part
in the conqueror's triumph, and killed herself by means of a
poisonous snake. Horace, a Roman, called her a great woman for
doing it, and no one would deny that there is a grandeur about
her death. But if Cleopatra was looking to her own victory as
to a thing that ought to be, and regarded the victory of Rome as
simply the senseless triumph of an irrational force, she, too, took
her own blindness to be a sufficient reason for rejecting the truth
of the whole.

The meaning of life obviously cannot coincide with the
arbitrary and changeable demands of each of the innumerable
human entities. If it did, it would be non-meaning— that is, it
would not exist at all. It follows, therefore, that a disappointed
and despairing suicide was not disappointed in and despaired of the

PREFACE xix

meaning of life, but, on the contrary, of his hope that life might
be meaningless. He had hoped that life would go in the way he
wanted it to, that it would always and in everything directly satisfy
his blind passions and arbitrary whims, i.e. that it would be sense
less — of that he was disappointed and found that life was not worth
living. But the very fact of his being disappointed at the world
not being meaningless proves that there is a meaning in it. This
meaning, which the man recognises in spite of himself, may be
unbearable to him ; instead of understanding it he may only repine
against some one and call reality by the name of a c hostile fate,'
but this does not alter the case. The meaning of life is simply
confirmed by the fatal failure of those who reject it : some of them
(the theoretic pessimists) must live unworthily^ in contradiction to
their own preaching, and others (the practical pessimists or the
suicides) in denying the meaning of life have actually to deny
their own existence. Life* clearly must have a meaning, since
those who deny it inevitably negate themselves, some by their
unworthy existence, and others by their violent death.

II

" The meaning of life is to be found in the aesthetic aspect of
it, in what is strong, majestic, beautiful. To devote ourselves to
this aspect of life, to preserve and strengthen it in ourselves and in
others, to make it predominant and develop it further till super
human greatness and new purest beauty is attained, this is the
end and the meaning of our existence." This view, associated with
the name of the gifted and unhappy Nietzsche, has now become the
fashionable philosophy in the place of the pessimism that has been
popular in recent years. Unlike the latter, it does not require
any criticism imported from outside, but can be disproved on its
own grounds. Let it be granted that the meaning of life is to be
found in strength and beauty. But, however much we may
devote ourselves to the aesthetic cult, we shall find in it no protec-

xx THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

tion, nor the least hope of protection, against the general and
inevitable fact which destroys this supposed independence of
strength and beauty, and renders void the divine and absolute
character they are alleged to possess. I mean the fact that
the end of all earthly strength is impotence, and the end of all
earthly beauty is ugliness.

When we speak of strength, grandeur, and beauty there rises
to the mind of every one, beginning with the Russian provincial
schoolmaster (see Gogol's Inspector- General] and ending with
Nietzsche himself, one and the same image, as the most perfect
historical embodiment of all these aesthetic qualities taken together.
This instance is sufficient.

"And it happened after that Alexander, son of Philip, the
Macedonian, who came out of the land of Chittim, had smitten
Darius, King of the Persians and Medes, that he reigned in his
stead, the first over Greece, and made many wars, and won many
strongholds, and slew the kings of the earth, and went through to
the ends of the earth, and took spoils of many nations, insomuch
that the earth was quiet before him, whereupon he was exalted, and
his heart was lifted up. And he gathered a mighty strong host,
and ruled over countries, and nations, and kings, who became
tributaries unto him. And after these things he fell sick, and
perceived that he should die " (Book I. of the Maccabees).

Is strength powerless before death really strength ? Is a
decomposing body a thing of beauty ? The ancient pattern of
beauty and of strength died and decayed like the weakest and most
hideous of creatures, and the modern worshipper of beauty and of
strength became in his lifetime a mental corpse. Why is it that
the first was not saved by his strength and beauty, and the second
by his cult of it ? No one can worship a deity which saves
neither those in whom it is incarnate, nor those who worship it.

In his last works the unhappy Nietzsche turned his views into
a furious weapon against Christianity. In doing so he showed
a low level of understanding befitting French free-thinkers of

PREFACE xxi

the eighteenth century rather than modern German savants. He
looked upon Christianity as belonging exclusively to the lower
classes, and was not even aware of the simple fact that the Gospel
was from the first received not as a doubtful call to rebellion but
as a joyful and certain message of sure salvation^ that the whole
force of the new religion lay in the fact that it was founded by
c the first fruits of them that slept,' who had risen from the dead,
and, as they firmly believed, secured eternal life to His followers.
To speak of slaves and pariahs in this connection is irrelevant.
Social distinctions mean nothing when it is a question of death
and resurrection. Do not c the gentle ' die as well as ' the simple' ?
Were not Sulla the Roman aristocrat and dictator, Antioch the
king of Syria, and Herod the king of Judaea eaten up by worms
while still alive ? The religion of salvation cannot be the religion
for slaves and c Chandals ' alone — it is the religion for all, since all
need salvation. Before beginning to preach so furiously against
equality, one ought to abolish the chief equaliser — death.

Nietzsche's polemic against Christianity is remarkably shallow,
and his pretension to be c antichrist ' would be extremely comical
had it not ended in such tragedy.1

The cult of natural strength and beauty is not directly opposed
to Christianity, and it is not Christianity that makes it void, but
its own inherent weakness. Christianity does not by any means
reject strength and beauty, but it is not satisfied with the strength
of a dying invalid or the beauty of a decomposing corpse. Chris
tianity has never preached hostility to or contempt for strength,
grandeur, or beauty as such. All Christian souls, beginning with
the first of them, rejoiced at having had revealed to them the in
finite source of all that is truly strong and beautiful, and at being
saved by it from subjection to the false power and grandeur of the
powerless and unlovely elements of the world. " My soul doth
magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

1 It will be remembered that after passing through a mania of greatness this un
fortunate writer fell into complete idiocy.

xxii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

. . . For He that is mighty hath done to me great things ; and holy
is His name. . . . He hath shewed strength with his arm ; He
hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He
hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of
low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things, and
the rich He hath sent empty away." It is obvious that the con
tempt here is only for the false, imaginary strength and wealth,
and that humility is not the absolute ideal or the final end but
only the necessary and the right way to heights unattainable to
the proud.

Strength and beauty are divine, but not in themselves : there
is a strong and beautiful Deity whose strength is never exhausted
and whose beauty never dies, for in Him strength and beauty are
inseparable from the good.

No one worships impotence and ugliness ; but some believe
in the eternal strength and beauty which are conditioned by the
good and which actually liberate their bearers and worshippers
from the power of death and corruption, while others extol strength
and beauty taken in the abstract and fictitious. The first
doctrine may be waiting for its final victory in the future, but
this does not make things any better for the second ; it is con
quered already, it is always being conquered — it dies with every
death and is buried in all the cemeteries.

Ill

The pessimism of false philosophers and of genuine suicides
inevitably leads us to recognise that life has a meaning. The
cult of strength and beauty inevitably shows that that meaning
is not to be found in strength and beauty as such, but only as
conditioned by the triumphant good. The meaning of life is in
the good ; but this opens the way for new errors in the definition
of what precisely we are to understand by the good.

At first sight there appears to be a sure and simple way of

PREFACE xxiii

avoiding any errors in this connection. If", it will be urged, the
meaning of life is the good, it has revealed itself to us already and
does not wait for any definition on our part. All we have to do
is to accept it with love and humility, and subordinate to it our
existence and our individuality, in order to make them rational.
The universal meaning of life or the inner relation of separate
entities to the great whole cannot have been invented by us ; it
was given from the first. The firm foundations of the family
have been laid down from all eternity ; the family by a living,
personal bond connects the present with the past and the future ;
the fatherland widens our mind and gives it a share in the glorious
traditions and aspirations of the soul of the nation ; the Church,
by connecting both our personal and our national life with what
is absolute and eternal, finally liberates us from the limitations of
a cramped existence. What, then, is there to trouble about ?
Live in the life of the whole, widen on all sides the limits of your
small self, 'take to heart' the interests of others and the interest
of all, be a good member of the family, a zealous patriot, a loyal
son of the Church, and you will know the good meaning of life
in practice and have no need to seek for it and look for its defini
tion. There is an element of truth in this view, but it is only
the beginning of truth. It is impossible to stop at this — the case
is not so simple as it looks.

Had life with its good meaning assumed at once, from all
eternity, one unchanging and abiding form, then there would
certainly be nothing to trouble about. There would be no prob
lem for the intellect, but only a question for the will — to accept
or unconditionally to reject that which has been unconditionally
given. This was precisely, as I understand it, the position of one
of the spirits of light in the first act of the creation of the world.
But our human position is less fateful and more complex. We
know that the historical forms of the Good which are given to us
do not form such a unity that we could either accept or reject
them as a whole. We know also that these forms and principles

xxiv THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

of life did not drop down ready made from heaven but were
developed in time and on earth. And knowing that they had
become what they are, we have no rational ground whatever for
affirming that they are finally and wholly fixed, and that what is
given at the moment is entirely completed and ended. But if
it is not ended, it is for us to carry on the work. In the
times prior to ours the higher forms of life — now the holy
heritage of the ages — did not come to be of themselves but were
evolved through men, through their thought and action, through
their intellectual and moral work. Since the historical form of
the eternal good is not one and unchanging, the choice has to be
made between many different things, and this cannot be done
without the critical work of thought. It must have been
ordained by God Himself that man should have no external
support, no pillow for his reason and conscience to rest on, but
should ever be awake and standing on his own legs. "What is man,
that Thou art mindful of him ? and the son of man, that Thou
visitest him ? " Piety itself forbids us to despise in ourselves and
in others that which God Himself respects, for the sake of which
He remembers and visits us — namely, the inner, unique, and
invaluable dignity of man's reason and conscience. And those
who are guilty of such contempt and seek to replace the inner
standard of truth by an external one, suffer natural retribution in
the fatal failure of their attempt. The concrete, clear, and
consistent minds among them — minds that cannot be content
with vague phrases — accomplish with remarkable rapidity a
direct descent from the certain to the doubtful, from the doubt
ful to the false, and from the false to the absurd. "God,"
they argue, " manifests His will to man externally through
the authority of the Church ; the only true Church is our
Church, its voice is the voice of God j the true representatives of
our Church are the clergy, hence their voice is the voice of God ;
the true representative of the clergy for each individual is his
confessor ; therefore all questions of faith and conscience ought

PREFACE xxv

in the last resort to be decided for each by his confessor." It all
seems clear and simple. The only thing to be arranged is that
all confessors should say the same thing, or that there should be
one confessor only — omnipresent and immortal. Otherwise, the
difference of opinion among many changing confessors may lead to
the obviously impious view that the voice of God contradicts itself.
As a matter of fact, if this individual or collective repre
sentative of external authority derives his significance merely
from his official position, all persons in the same position have
the same authority which is rendered void by their contradicting
one another. And if, on the other hand, one or some of
them derive their superior authority in my eyes from the fact of
my confidence in them, it follows that I myself am the source and
the creator of my highest authority, and that I submit to my
own arbitrary will alone and find in it the meaning of life. This
is the inevitable result of seeking at all costs an external support for
reason, and of taking the absolute meaning of life to be some
thing that is imposed upon man from without. The man
who wants to accept the meaning of life on external authority
ends by taking for that meaning the absurdity of his own
arbitrary choice. There must be no external, formal relation
between the individual and the meaning of his life. The ex
ternal authority is necessary as a transitory stage, but it must not
be preserved for ever and regarded as an abiding and final norm.
The human ego can only expand by giving inner heartfelt re
sponse to what is greater than itself, and not by rendering merely
formal submission to it, which after all really alters nothing.

IV

Although the good meaning of life is greater than and prior
to any individual man, it cannot be accepted as something ready
made or taken on trust from some external authority. It must be
understood by the man himself and be made his own through

*

xxvi THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

faith, reason, and experience. This is the necessary condition
of a morally-worthy existence. When, however, this necessary
subjective condition of the good and rational life is taken to be its
essence and purpose, the result is a new moral error, namely, the
rejection of all historical and collective manifestations and forms
of the good, of everything except the inner moral activities and
states of the individual. This moral amorphism or subjectivism is
the direct opposite of the doctrine of the conservative practical
humility just referred to. That doctrine affirmed that life and
reality in their given condition are wiser and better than man,
that the historical forms which life assumes are in themselves
good and wise, and that all man has to do is reverently to bow
down before them and to seek in them the absolute rule and
authority for his personal existence. Moral amorphism, on the
contrary, reduces everything to the subjective side, to our own
self-consciousness and self-activity. The only life for us is our
own mental life ; the good meaning of life is to be found solely
in the inner states of the individual and in the actions and rela
tions which directly and immediately follow therefrom. This
inner meaning and inner good is naturally inherent in every one,
but it is crushed, distorted, and made absurd and evil by the
different historical developments and institutions such as the state,
the Church, and civilisation in general. If every one's eyes were
open to the true state of things, people would be easily persuaded
to renounce these disastrous perversions of human nature which
are based in the long run upon compulsory organisations, such as
the law, the army, etc. All these institutions are kept up by

intentional and evil deceit and violence on the part of the
fninority, but their existence chiefly depends upon the lack of
understanding and self-deception of the majority which, besides,
employ various artificial means for blunting their reason and con
science — wine, tobacco, etc. Men, however, are beginning to
realise the error of their ways, and when they finally give up their
present views and change their conduct, all evil forms of human

PREFACE xxvii

relations will fall to the ground ; evil will disappear as soon as
men cease to resist it by force, and the moral good will be
spontaneously manifested and realised among the formless mass of
* tramping ' saints.

In its rejection of different institutions moral amorphism for
gets one institution which is rather important — namely, death,
and it is this oversight which alone renders the doctrine plausible.
For if the preachers of moral amorphism were to think of death
they would have to affirm one of two things : either that with the
abolition of the law courts, armies, etc., men will cease to die, or
that the good meaning of life, incompatible with political kingdoms,
is quite compatible with the kingdom of death. The dilemma is
inevitable, and both alternatives to it are equally absurd. It is
clear that this doctrine, which says nothing about death, contains
it in itself. It claims to be the rehabilitation of true Christianity.
It is obvious, however, both from the historical and from the
psychological point of view, that the Gospel did not overlook
death. Its message was based in the first place upon the resurrec
tion of one as an accomplished fact, and upon the future resurrec
tion of all as a certain promise. Universal resurrection means the
creation of a perfect form for all that exists. It is the ultimate
expression and realisation of the good meaning of the universe,
and is therefore the final end of history. In recognising the
good meaning of life but rejecting all its objective forms, moral
amorphism must regard as senseless the whole history of the world
and humanity, since it entirely consists in evolving new forms or
life and making them more perfect. There is sense in rejecting
one form of life for the sake of another and a more perfect one,
but there is no meaning in rejecting form as such. Yet such
rejection is the logical consequence of the anti-historical view.
If we absolutely reject the forms of social, political, and religious
life, evolved by human history, there can be no ground for recog
nising the organic forms worked out by the history of nature or
by the world process, of which the historical process is the direct

xxviii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and inseparable continuation. Why should my animal body be
more real, rational, and holy than the body of my nation ? It
will be said that the body of a people does not exist, any more
than its soul, that the idea of a social collective organism is merely
a metaphor for expressing the totality of distinct individuals.
If, however, this exclusively mechanical point of view be once
adopted, we are bound to go further still and say that in reality
there is no individual organism and no individual soul, and that
what exists are merely the different combinations of elementary
particles of matter, devoid of all qualitative content. If the prin
ciple of form be denied, we are logically bound to give up the
attempt to understand and to recognise either the historical or
the organic life or any existence whatever, for it is only pure
nothing that is entirely formless and unconditional.

I have indicated two extreme moral errors that are contra
dictory of one another. One is the doctrine of the self-effacement
of the human personality before the historical forms of life recog
nised as possessing external authority, — the doctrine of passive
submission or practical quietism ; the other is the doctrine of
the self-affirmation of the human personality against all historical
forms and authorities — the doctrine of formlessness and anarchy.
The common essence of the two extreme views, that in which,
in spite of the opposition between them, they agree, will no doubt
disclose to us the source of moral errors in general, and will save
us from the necessity of analysing the particular varieties of moral
falsity which may be indefinite in number.

The two opposed views coincide in the fact that neither of
* them take the good in its essence, or as it is in itself^ but connect
it with acts and relations which may be either good or evil accord
ing to their motive and their end. In other words, they take
something which is good, but which may become evil, and they

PREFACE xxix

put it in the place of the Good itself, treating the conditioned as the
unconditional. Thus, for instance, it is a good thing and a moral
duty to submit to national and family traditions and institutions
in so far as they express the good or give a definite form to my
right relation to God, men, and the world. If, however, this
condition is forgotten, if the conditional duty is taken to be
absolute and ' the national interest ' is put in the place of God's
truth, the good may become evil and a source of evil. It is
easy in that case to arrive at the monstrous idea recently put
forth by a French minister : " It is better to execute twenty
innocent men than to attack (porter atteinte] the authority of a
national institution." Take another instance. Suppose that in
stead of paying due respect to a council of bishops or to some
other ecclesiastical authority, as a true organ of the collective
organisation of piety, from which I do not separate myself, — 1
submit to it unconditionally, without going into the case for
myself. I assume that this particular council as such is an unfailing
authority, that is, I recognise it in an external way. And then
it turns out that the council to which I submitted was the Robber
Council of Ephesus, or something of the kind, and that owing to
my wrong and uncalled-for submission to the formal expression
of the supposed will of God, I have myself suddenly become a
rebellious heretic. Once more evil has come out of the good.
Take a third instance. Not trusting the purity of my conscience
and the power of my intellect, I entrust both my conscience and
reason to a person vested with divine authority and give up
reasoning and willing for myself. One would think nothing
could be better. But my confessor proves to be a wolf in sheep's
clothing, and instils in me pernicious thoughts and evil rules.
Once more, the conditional good of humility, accepted uncon
ditionally, becomes an evil.

Such are the results of the erroneous confusion of the good
itself with the particular forms in which it is manifested. The
opposite error, which limits the nature of the good by rejecting

xxx THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the historical forms of its expression, comes to the same thing.
In the first case the forms or institutions are taken to be the
absolute good, which does not correspond to truth and leads to
evil. In the second case these forms and institutions are un
conditionally rejected, and therefore are recognised as uncon
ditionally evil, which is again contrary to the truth, and can
not therefore lead to anything good. The first maintain, for
instance, that the will of God is revealed to us through the priest
only ; the second affirm that this never happens, that the Supreme
will cannot speak to us through the priest, but is revealed solely
and entirely in our own consciousness. It is obvious, however,
that in both cases the will of God has been left out of account and
replaced, in the first instance, by the priest, and in the second by
the self-affirming ego. And yet one would think there could be
no difficulty in understanding that once the will of God is
admitted its expression ought not to be restricted to or ex
hausted by the deliverances either of the inner consciousness or
of the priest. The will of God may speak both in us and in him,
and its only absolute and necessary demand is that we should in
wardly conform to it and take up a good or right attitude to
everything, including the priest, and indeed putting him before
other things for the sake of what he represents. Similarly, when
the first say that the practical good of life is wholly contained in
the nation and the state, and the second declare the nation and
the state to be a deception and an evil, it is obvious that the first
put into the place of the absolute good its conditional manifesta
tions in the nation and the state, and the second limit the
absolute good by rejecting its historical forms. In their view the
rejection is unconditional, and the good is conditioned by it.
But it ought to be obvious that the true good in this sphere
depends for us solely upon our just and good relation to the nation
and to the state, upon the consciousness of our debt to them,
upon the recognition of all that they have contained in the past
and contain now, and of what they must still acquire before they

PREFACE xxxi

can become in the full sense the means of embodying the good
that lives in humanity. It is possible for us to take up this just
attitude to the Church, the nation, and the state, and thus to
render both ourselves and them more perfect ; we can know and
love them in their true sense, in God's way. Why, then, should
we distort this true sense by unconditional worship, or, worse still,
by unconditional rejection ? There is no reason why, instead of
doing rightful homage to the sacred forms, and neither separating
them from, nor confusing them with, their content, we should
pass from idolatry to iconoclasm, and from it to a new and worse
idolatry.

There is no justification for these obvious distortions of the
truth, these obvious deviations from the right way. It is as clear
as day that the only thing which ought to be unconditionally
accepted is that which is intrinsically good in itself, and the only
thing which ought to be rejected is that which is wholly and
essentially evil, while all other things ought to be either accepted
or rejected according to their actual relation to this inner essence
of good or evil. It is clear that if the good exists it must possess
its own inner definitions and attributes, which do not finally depend
upon any historical forms and institutions, and still less upon the
rejection of them.

The moral meaning of life is originally and ultimately deter
mined by the good itself, inwardly accessible to us through our
reason and conscience in so far as these inner forms of the good
are freed by moral practice from slavery to passions and from the
limitations of personal and collective selfishness. This is the
ultimate court of appeal for all external forms and events. " Know
ye not that we shall judge angels ? " St. Paul writes to the faithful.
And if even the heavenly things are subject to our judgment, this
is still more true of all earthly things. Man is in principle or in
his destination an unconditional inner form of the good as an uncon
ditional content ; all else is conditioned and relative. The good
as such is not conditioned by anything, but itself conditions all

xxxii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

things, and is realised through all things. In so far as the good
is not conditioned by anything, it is pure ; in so far as it con
ditions all things, it is all-embracing ; and in so far as it is realised
through all things, it is all-powerful.

If the good were not pure, if it were impossible in each practical
question to draw an absolute distinction between good and evil,
and in each particular case to say yes or «0, life would be altogether
devoid of moral worth and significance. If the good were not all-
embracing, if it were impossible to connect with it all the concrete
relations of life, to justify the good in all of them, and to correct
them all by the good, life would be poor and one-sided. Finally,
if the good had no jxnvec, if it could not in the end triumph over
everything, including ' the last enemy death,' — life would be in
vain.

The inner attributes of the good determine the main problem
of human life ; its moral meaning is to be found in the service or
the pure, all-powerful, and all-embracing good.

To be worthy of its object and of man himself, such service
must be voluntary^ and in order to be that it must be conscious.
It is the business of moral philosophy to make it an object of
reflective consciousness, and partly to anticipate the result which
our reflection must attain. The founder of moral philosophy as a
science^ Kant, dwelt upon the first essential attribute of the absolute
good, its purity, which demands from' man a formally uncon
ditional or autonomous will. The pure good demands that it
should be chosen for its own sake alone j any other motives are
unworthy of it. Without repeating what Kant has done so well
with regard to the question of the formal purity of the good will,
I have paid particular attention to the second essential attribute of
the good, namely, its all-embracing character. In doing so I did
not separate it from the other two attributes (as Kant had done
with regard to the first), but directly developed the rational and
ideal content of the all-embracing good out of the concrete moral
data in which it is contained. As a result, I obtained not the

PREFACE xxxiii

dialectical moments of the abstract Idea, as in Hegel, nor the
empirical complications of natural facts, as in Herbert Spencer, but
complete and exhaustive moral norms for all the fundamental
practical relations of the individual and the collective life. It is
its all-embracing character alone which justifies the good to our
consciousness ; it is only in so far as it conditions all things that
it can manifest both its purity and its invincible power.

VLADIMIR SOLOVYOF.

CONTENTS

PAGE

EDITOR'S NOTE . . . . . vii

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION . . . . ix

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION (A Preliminary Conception of the

Moral Meaning of Life} . . . . xv

THE GENERAL QUESTION AS TO THE MEANING OF LIFE :

I. Two ways of denying the meaning of life. — Theoretical
pessimism. — The inner inconsistency of persons who argue about
the advantages of non-existence, but in truth prefer existence. —

S The fact that they cling to life proves that life has a meaning
though they do not understand it.-^Practical pessimism which
finds its final expression in suicide. — Suicides also involuntarily
prove that life has a meaning, for their despair is due to the fact
that life does not fulfil their arbitrary and contradictory demands.
These demands could only be fulfilled if life were devoid of
meaning ; the non-fulfilment proves that life has a meaning which
these persons, owing to their irrationality, do not wish to know
(instances : Romeo, Cleopatra) ..... xv

II. The view that life has an exclusively aesthetic meaning,'
which expresses itself in whatever is strong, majestic, beautiful,
without relation to the moral good. — This view is unanswerably
refuted by the fact of death, which transforms all natural strength
and greatness into nothingness, and all natural beauty into utter
ugliness (explanation : words of the Bible about Alexander of
Macedon). — Nietzsche's pitiful attacks on Christianity. — True
strength, grandeur, and beauty are inseparable from the absolute

III. The view which admits that the meaning of life is to be
found in the good, but affirms that this good, as given from above,
and realised in forms of life laid down once for all (family, father
land, Church), merely demands that man should submit to it
without asking any questions. — The insufficiency of this view,
which forgets that the historical forms of the good possess no
external unity and finality. — Man therefore must not submit to

xxxvi THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

them implicitly, but must know their nature and further their
growth and development , . . . . . xxiii

IV. The opposite error (moral amorphism), which asserts that
the good is to be found only in the subjective mental states of
each individual and in the good relations between men which
naturally follow therefrom, and that all collectively organised
forms of society lead to nothing but evil, since they are artificial
and make use of compulsion. — But the social organisation brought
about by the historical life of humanity is the necessary continua
tion of the physical organisation brought about by the life of the
universe. — All that is real is complex, nothing exists apart from
this or that form of collective organisation ; and the principle of
moral amorphism consistently worked out, logically demands the
rejection of all that is real for the sake of emptiness or non-being . xxv

V. The two extreme forms of moral error — the doctrine of
absolute submission to the historical forms of social life and the
doctrine of their unconditional rejection (moral amorphism) —
coincide in so far as neither of them takes the good as such, and
both regard as unconditionally right or as unconditionally wrong
things which in their nature are conditional (explanatory examples).
— Man in his reason and conscience as the unconditional inner
form, the unconditional content of which is the good. — The
general inner properties of the good as such : its purity or
autonomy, in so far as it is not conditioned by anything external
to it ; its fulness or its all-embracing character in so far as it con
ditions everything ; its power or actuality, in so far as it is realised
through all things. — The purpose of moral philosophy, and
especially of the system put forward in the present work . . xxviii

INTRODUCTION

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE.

I. The formal universality of the idea of the good at the lower
stages of moral consciousness independently of its material content
(examples and explanations). — The growth of moral consciousness,
gradually introducing into the formal idea of the good a more
befitting content which is more connected with it inwardly,
naturally becomes the science of Ethics or Moral Philosophy

II. Moral philosophy does not wholly depend upon positive
religion. — St. Paul's testimony as to the moral law ' written in the
hearts ' of the Gentiles. — Since there exist many religions and
denominations, disputes between them presuppose a common
ground of morality (explanations and examples), and, consequently,

CONTENTS xxxvii

PAGE

the moral norms to which the disputing parties appeal cannot
depend upon their religious and denominational differences . 3

III. The independence of the moral from the theoretical
philosophy (from epistemology and metaphysics). — In moral
philosophy we study our inner attitude to our own actions (and j
that which is logically connected with it), i.e. something unquestion
ably knowable by us, since it is produced by ourselves ; the dis
puted question as to the theoretical certainty concerning other
kinds of being, not connected with us morally, is in this respect
irrelevant. — The critique of knowledge can go no further than
doubt the objective existence of that which is known, and such
theoretical doubt is insufficient to undermine the morally practical
certitude that certain states and actions of the subject are binding
as possessed of inner worth. — Besides, theoretical philosophy itself
overcomes such scepticism in one way or another. — Finally, even
if it were possible to be perfectly certain of the non-existence of
the external world, the inner distinction between good and evil
would not thereby be abolished ; for if it be wrong to bear malice
against a h uman being, it is still more so against an empty phantom ;
if it be shameful slavishly to surrender to the promptings of actual
sensuality, to be slave to an imaginary sensuality is worse still . 9

IV. Moral philosophy does not depend upon the affirmative
answer to the metaphysical question of ' free will,' since morality
is possible on the hypothesis of determinism, which asserts that
human actions have a necessary character. — In philosophy we
must distinguish the purely mechanical necessity, which in itself
is incompatible with any moral action, from the psychological
and the ethical or the rationally ideal necessity. — The unquestion
able difference between mechanical movement and a mental reaction
necessarily called forth by motives, i.e. by presentations associated,
with feelings and desires. — Difference in the quality of motives that
prevail in the life of this or of that individual enables us to dis
tinguish a good spiritual nature from a bad one, and, in so far as
a good nature, as we know from experience, can be consciously
strengthened and developed, and a bad consciously corrected and
reformed, we are given in the domain of psychological necessity
itself certain conditions for ethical problems and theories . . 14

V. In the case of man, the universal rational idea of the good,
expressing itself as the consciousness of absolute duty to conform
to it, may become the prevailing motive of action, over and above
different psychological impulses. Man may do good quite irre
spectively of considerations of pleasure and pain, for the sake of
the good as such or of the unconditionally excellent. — The con
ception of moral necessity or, what is the same thing, of rational
freedom. — Just as the psychological necessity (due to mental affec
tions) is superior to mechanical necessity, and means freedom from

xxxviii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

it, so the moral necessity (due to the idea of the good as the pre
vailing motive), while remaining necessary, is superior to the
psychological necessity of mental affections, and means freedom
from the lower motives. — In order that the absolute idea of the
good should be a sufficient ground for human action, the subject
must have a sufficient degree of moral receptivity and a sufficient
knowledge of the good (explanations and Biblical examples).— It
is metaphysically possible that absolute evil may be arbitrarily pre
ferred to the absolute good. — Moral philosophy, being a complete
knowledge of the good, is presupposed in the correct formulation
and solution of the metaphysical question concerning the freedom
of choice between good and evil, and its content does not depend
upon the solution of that question . . . .17

PART I
THE GOOD IN HUMAN NATURE

CHAPTER I

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY.

I. The feeling of shame (originally of sexual modesty) as the
natural root of human morality. — Actual shamelessness of all animals
and the supposed shamelessness of certain savage peoples ; the latter
indicates difference in external relations and not in the feeling
itself. — Darwin's erroneous inference from phallism . . 25

II. The profound meaning of shame : that which is ashamed
in the mental act of shame separates itself from that of which it
is ashamed. In being ashamed of the fundamental process of his
animal nature, man proves that he is not merely a natural event or
phenomenon, but has an independent super-animal significance (con
firmation and explanation out of the Bible). The feeling of shame

is inexplicable from the external and the utilitarian point of view. 28

III. The second moral datum of human nature — pity or the
sympathetic feeling which expresses man's moral relation not to
the lower nature (as in shame) but to living beings like himself. —
Pity cannot be the result of human progress, for it exists among
the animals also. — Pity is the individual psychological root of the
right social relations . . . . . .32

IV. The third moral datum of human nature — the feeling of
reverence or of piety, which expresses man's due relation to the

CONTENTS xxxix

PAGE

higher principle and constitutes the individual psychological root
of religion. — Darwin's reference to the rudiments of religious feel
ing in tame animals ...... 34

V. The feelings of shame, pity, and reverence exhaust the
whole range of moral relations possible for man, namely, of rela
tions to that which is below him, on a level with him, and above him.
— These normal relations are determined as the mastery over material
sensuality, as the solidarity with other living beings, and as the inner
submission to the superhuman principle. — Other determinations of
moral life — all the virtues — may be shown to be modifications of
these three fundamental facts, or as a result of the interaction
between them and the intellectual nature of man (example) . 35

VI. Conscience as a modification of shame in a definite and
generalised form. — The supposed conscience of animals . . 37

VII. From the fundamental facts of morality human reason
deduces universal and necessary principles and rules of the moral

life . . . . . . . -39

CHAPTER II

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY.

I. The moral self-affirmation of man as a supermaterial being,
half-conscious and unstable in the simple feeling of shame, is, by
the activity of reason, raised into the principle of asceticism. —
Asceticism is not directed against the material nature in general :
that nature cannot, as such, be recognised as evil from any point of
view (proofs from the chief pessimistic doctrines — the Vedanta, the
Sankhya, Buddhism, Egyptian gnosis, Manicheism) . . 41

II. The opposition of the spiritual principle to the material
nature, finding its immediate expression in the feeling of shame and
developed in asceticism, is called forth not by the material nature
as such, but by the undue preponderance of the lower life, which
seeks to make the rational being of man into a passive instrument or
a useless appendage of the blind physical process. — In analysing the
meaning of shame, reason logically deduces from it a necessary,
universal, and morally binding norm : the physical life of man

must be subordinate to the spiritual . . . .44

III. The moral conception of spirit and of flesh. — Flesh as
excited animality or irrationality, false to its essential definition
to serve as the matter or the potential basis of the spiritual
life. — Real significance of the struggle between the spirit and

the flesh . ... . . . . .45

IV. Three chief moments in the conflict of the spirit with the
flesh : (i) inner distinction of the spirit from the flesh; (2) actual

xl THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

struggle of the spirit for its independence ; (3) clear preponder
ance of the spirit over the flesh or abolition of the evil carnal
element. — Practical importance of the second moment, which gives
rise to the definite and binding demands of morality and, in the
first place, to the demand for self-control . . . .47

V. Preliminary tasks of asceticism : acquisition by the rational

will of the power to control breathing and sleep . . .49

VI. Ascetic demands with regard to the functions of nutrition
and reproduction. — Misunderstandings concerning the question of
sexual relations. — Christian view of the matter . . .50

VII. Different aspects of the struggle between the spirit and
the flesh. — The three psychological moments in the victory of the
evil principle : thought, imagination, possession. — The correspond
ing ascetic rules intended to prevent an evil mental state from
becoming a passion and a vice : " dashing of the babes of Babylon
against the stones " ; thinking of something different ; performing

a moral action ....... 54

VIII. Asceticism, or abstinence raised into a principle, is
unquestionably good. — When this good is taken, as such, to be
the whole good, we have evil asceticism after the pattern of the
devil, who neither eats nor drinks, and remains in celibacy. — Since
an evil or pitiless ascetic, being an imitator of the devil, does not
deserve moral approbation, it follows that the principle of asceticism
itself has a moral significance or is good only on condition of
its being united with the principle of altruism, which has its root

in pity . . . . . . . -57

CHAPTER III

PITY AND ALTRUISM.

I. The positive meaning of pity. — Just as shame singles man
out from the rest of nature and opposes him to other animals,
so pity inwardly connects him with the whole world of the
living . .... 59

II. The inner basis of the moral relation to other beings is to be
found, apart from all metaphysical theories, in compassion or pity
only, and not in co-pleasure or co-rejoicing. — Positive participation
in the pleasure of another contains the approval of that pleasure,
which may, however, be evil. — Participation in it may therefore be
good or evil according to the object of the pleasure. — Since the co-
rejoicing may itself be immoral, it cannot in any case be the basis

of moral relations. — Answer to certain objections . . .60

III. Pity as a motive of altruistic action and as a possible basis

of altruistic principles . . . . . .63

CONTENTS xli

PAGE

IV. Schopenhauer's theory of the irrational or mysterious
character of compassion in which, it is urged, there is an immediate
and perfect identification of one entity with another, foreign to it. —
Criticism of this view. — In the fundamental expression of compas
sion — the maternal instinct of animals — the intimate real connec
tion between the being who pities and the object of its pity is
obvious. — Speaking generally, the natural connection given in
reason and experience between all living beings as parts of one
whole sufficiently explains its psychological expression in pity,
which thus completely corresponds to the clear meaning of the
universe, is compatible with reason, or is rational. — The erroneous
conception of pity as of an immediate and complete identification
of two beings (explanations) .....

V. Infinite universal pity described by St. Isaac the Syrian

VI. Pity as such is not the only foundation of all morality,
as Schopenhauer mistakenly asserts. — Kindness to living beings
is compatible with immorality in other respects. — Just as ascetics
may be hard and cruel, so kind-hearted people may be intemperate
and dissolute, and, without doing direct and intentional evil,
injure both themselves and their neighbours by their shameful
behaviour ........ 69

VII. The true essence of pity is not simple identification of
oneself with another, but the recognition of another person's inner
worth — of his right to existence and to the greatest possible happi
ness. — The conception of pity, taken in its universality and inde
pendently of subjective mental states connected with it (i.e. taken
logically and not psychologically), is the conception of truth and of

justice : it is true that other people are similar to me and have the
same nature, and it is just that my relation to them should be the
same as my relation to myself. — Altruism corresponds to truth or
to that which is, while egoism presupposes untruth or that which
is not, for in reality an individual self does not possess the exclusive
and all-important significance which it egoistically assigns to itself.
— The expansion of personal egoism into the family, national,
political, and religious egoism is a sign of historical progress of
morality, but does not disprove the false principle of egoism, which
contradicts the absolute truth of the altruistic principle . . 71

VIII. Two rules — of justice (to injure no one) and of mercy (to
help every one) — that follow from the principle of altruism. — The
mistaken division and opposition of mercy and of justice, which are
in truth merely the different aspects or manifestations of one and
the same moral motive. — The moral principle in the form of justice
does not demand the material or qualitative equality of all indi
vidual and collective subjects. It merely demands that in the
presence of all the necessary and desirable differences there should
be preserved something that is unconditional and the same for all,

xlii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

namely, the significance of each as an end in himself, and not
merely as a means for the purposes of others . . .74

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY.

I. The peculiarity of the religiously-moral determinations. —
I Their root is in the normal relation of children to parents, based

upon an inequality which cannot be reduced to justice or deduced
from pity : a child immediately recognises the superiority of his
parents to himself and his dependence upon them, feels reverence for
them and the necessity of obeying them (explanation) . . 77

II. The original germ of religion is neither fetishism (proof),
nor naturalistic mythology (proof), but pietas erga parentes — first in
relation to the mother and then to the father . . .80

III. The religious relation of children to parents as to their
immediate providence becomes more complex and is spiritualised,
passing into reverence for the departed parents, lifted above ordinary
surroundings and possessed of mysterious power ; the father in his
lifetime is only a candidate for a god, and a mediator and priest
of the real god — of the dead grandparent or ancestor. — The char
acter and significance of ancestor-worship (illustrations from the
beliefs of ancient peoples) . . . . . .82

IV. Whatever the difference in the religious conceptions and
manner of worship may be, — from the primitive cult of tribal
ancestors up to the Christian worship in spirit and in truth of the
one universal Heavenly Father, — the moral essence of religion
remains the same. A savage cannibal and a perfect saint, in so far
as both are religious, are at one in their filial relation to the higher
and in their resolution to do not their own will but the will of the
Father. — Such natural religion is the inseparable part of the law
written in our hearts, and without it a rational fulfilment of other
demands of morality is impossible . . . . .85

V. Supposed godlessness or impiety (example). — Cases of real
impiety, i.e. of not recognising anything superior to oneself, are as
little proof against the principle as piety and its binding character,
as the actual existence of shameless and pitiless people is a proof
against the duties of abstinence and kindness. — Apart from our
having or not having any positive beliefs, we must, as rational
beings, admit that the life of the world and our own life has a
meaning, and that therefore everything depends upon a supreme
rational principle towards which we must adopt a filial attitude,
submitting all our actions to 'the will of the. Father,' that speaks

to us through reason and conscience . . . .87

CONTENTS xliii

PAGE

VI. In the domain of piety, as of all morality, higher demands
do not cancel the lower, but presuppose and include them (examples).
— Our real dependence upon the one Father of the universe is not
immediate, in so far as our existence is determined in the first
instance by heredity, i.e. by our ancestors, and the environment
created by them. — Since the Supreme Will has determined our
existence through our ancestors, we cannot, in bowing down before
Its action, be indifferent to Its instruments (explanations). — The
moral duty of reverence to providential men . . 89

CHAPTER V

VIRTUES.

I. Three general aspects of morality : virtue (in the narrow
sense — as a good natural quality), norm or the rule of good actions,
and moral good as the consequence of them. — The indissoluble
logical connection between these three aspects permits us to re
gard the whole content of morality under the first term — as a
virtue (in the wide sense) . . . . . .92

II. Virtue as man's right relation to everything. Right
1 relation is not an equal relation (explanation). — Since man is

neither absolutely superior nor absolutely inferior to everything
else, nor unique of his kind, but is conscious of himself as an
intermediary being and one of many intermediary beings, it follows
with logical necessity that the moral norms have a triple character,
or that there are three fundamental virtues in the proper sense of
the term. — These are always alike in all, since they express the
essential moral quality, determined in the right way and giving
rise to right determinations. — All the other so-called virtues are
merely qualities of the will and manners of action which have no
moral determination within themselves and no constant corre
lation with the law of duty, and may therefore be sometimes
virtues, sometimes indifferent states, and sometimes vices (explana
tions and examples) ... 93

III. Moral valuation depends upon our right attitude to the
object and not upon the psychological quality of volitional and
emotional states. — The analysis — from this point of view — of
the so-called cardinal or philosophical virtues, and especially
of justice. — It is understood as rectitude, as aequitas, as justitia,
and as legalitas. — In the first sense — of what is right in general
— it goes beyond the boundaries of ethics ; in the second, of im
partiality, and in the third — of 'injuring no one' — justice corre
sponds to the general principle of altruism (since the rules 'injure
no one ' and ' help all ' are inseparable) ; in the fourth sense — of

xliv THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

» PAGE

absolute submission to existing laws — justice is not in itself a virtue,
but may or may not be according to circumstances (classical
examples : Socrates, Antigone) . . . . -95

IV. The so-called ' theological virtues ' have moral worth not
unconditionally and in themselves, but in relation to other facts. —
Faith is a virtue only on three conditions : (i) that its object is real ;
(2) that it has worth ; (3) that the relation of faith to its real and
worthy object is a worthy one (explanations). — Such faith coincides
with true piety. — The same is true of hope. — The positive com
mandment of love is conditioned by the negative : do not love the
world, nor all that is in the world (demand for abstinence or the
principle of asceticism). — Love to God coincides with true piety,
and love to our neighbours with pity. — Thus love is not a virtue,
but the culminating expression of all the fundamental demands of
morality in the three necessary respects : in relation to the higher,

to the lower, and to the equal . . . . .100

V. Magnanimity and disinterestedness as modifications of
ascetic virtue. — Liberality as a special manifestation of altruism. —
The different moral significance of patience and tolerance, accord
ing to the object and the situation . . . . 102

VI. Truthfulness. — Since speech is the instrument of reason for
expressing the truth, misuse (in lying and deception) of this formal
and universally-human means for selfish and material ends is shame
ful for the person who lies, insulting and injurious to the persons
deceived, and contrary to the two fundamental moral demands of
respect for human dignity in oneself and of justice to others. —
Consistently with the conception of truth, the reality of a parti
cular external fact must not be arbitrarily separated from the
moral significance of the given situation as a whole. — Difference
between material falsity and moral falsehood. — Detailed analysis of
the question as to whether it is .permissible to save a man's life by
verbally deceiving the murderer . : . . .104

VII. The conception of truth or Tightness unites in a supreme
synthesis the three fundamental demands of morality, in so far as
one and the same truth demands from its very nature a different
attitude to our lower nature (the ascetic attitude), to our neighbours
(the altruistic attitude), and to the supreme principle (the religious
attitude). — Opposition between the absolute inner necessity or the
binding nature of truth and its accidental and conditional character
as a sufficient motive of human actions. — Hence the desire to re
place the conception of the moral good or the unconditional duty

by the conception of happiness or of the unconditionally desirable 1 1 1

CONTENTS xlv

CHAPTER VI

PAGE

THE SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY (A Critique of
Abstract Hedonism in its Different Forms).

I. In so far as the (moral) good is not desired by a person and
is not regarded by him as desirable, it is not a good for him ; in so
far as it is regarded by him as desirable, but does not determine his
will, it is not an actual good for him ; in so far as it determines his
will but does not give him the power to realise in the whole world
that which ought to be, it is not a sufficient good. — Owing to such
empirical discrepancy the good is regarded as distinct from the
right, and is understood as welfare, (eudaemonia). — The obvious
advantage that the eudaemonic principle has over the purely moral
one is that welfare is from the very definition of it desirable for all.
— The nearest definition of welfare is pleasure, and eudaemonism
becomes hedonism . . . . . . .114

II. The weakness of hedonism. — Universality involved in the
conception of pleasure is formal and logical or abstract only, and
does not express any definite and actual unity, and therefore supplies
no general principle or rule of action. — Man may find real pleasure
in things which he knows lead to destruction, i.e. in things which
are most undesirable. — Transition from pure hedonism to extreme
pessimism (Hygesias of Cyrenae — ' the advocate of death ') . 1 1 6

III. Analysis of pleasure. — What is really desired (or is an
object of desire) are certain represented realities and not the
pleasurable sensations aroused by them (proof). — The desirability
of certain objects or their significance as a good depends not upon
the subjective pleasurable states that follow, but upon the known
or unknown objective relation of these objects to our bodily or
mental nature. — Pleasure as an attribute of the good. — From this
point of view the highest welfare consists in possessing such good
things which in their totality or as a final result give the maximum
of pleasure and the minimum of pain — the chief practical signifi
cance here belongs not to pleasure as such, but to a careful con
sideration of the consequences of this or of that line of conduct ;
prudent hedonism . . . . . . .117

IV. If the final end is welfare, the whole point is the actual
attainment and the secure possession of it ; neither the one nor
the other, however, may be ensured by prudence (proof). — The
insufficiency of ideal (intellectual and Aesthetic) pleasures from the
hedonistic point of view. — Since pleasures are not abiding quan
tities which can be added together, but merely transitory subjective
states which, when past, cease to be pleasures, the advantage of
prudent hedonism over reckless enjoyment of life is apparent only izo

xlvi THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

V. Self-sufficient hedonism, whose principle is the inner freedom
from desires and affections which render man unhappy. — Being
purely negative, such freedom can only be a condition of obtaining

a higher good and not that good itself . . . .123

VI. Utilitarianism affirms as a supreme practical principle
the service of the common good or of general happiness, which
coincides with individual happiness rightly understood. — Utili
tarianism is mistaken not in its practical demands, in so far as
they correspond with the demands of altruistic morality, but in its
desire to base these demands upon egoism, contrary to the testimony
of experience (self-sacrifice of individual entities to the genus
among animals and savage races ; ' struggle for the life of
others') . . . . . . . .124

VII. It is logically erroneous to establish the connection utili
tarianism establishes between personal gain and general happiness.
— General weakness of utilitarianism and all hedonism. — Happi
ness remains an indefinite and unrealisable demand, to which the
moral demand of the good as duty is in every respect superior.

— Transition to Part II. 126

PART II
THE GOOD IS FROM GOD

CHAPTER I

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES.

I. Conscience and shame . . . . .135

II. The feeling of shame, primarily and fundamentally con
nected with the sexual life, transcends the boundaries of the
material existence, and, as the expression of formal disapprobation,
accompanies every violation of the moral law in all spheres of activity 136

III. For an animal entity the infinity of life is given in geni-
talibus only, and the entity in question feels and acts as a limited,
passive means or instrument of the generic process in its bad in
finity ; and it is here, in this centre of the natural life, that man
becomes conscious that the infinity of the genus, in which the animal
finds its supreme destination, is insufficient. — The fact that man is
chiefly and primarily ashamed of the very essence of the animal
life, of the fundamental expression of the physical nature, directly
proves him to be a super-animal and super-natural being. — In sexual
shame man becomes human in the full sense of the term . .. 137

CONTENTS xlvii

PAGE

IV. The eternal life of the genus based upon the eternal death
of individual entities is shameful and unsatisfactory to man, who
both wants, and feels it his duty, to possess eternal life, and not
merely to be its instrument. — The true genius . . .138

V. The path of animal procreation or of the perpetration of
death, felt at the beginning to be shameless, proves subsequently
to be both pitiless and impious : it is pitiless, for it means the ex
pulsion or the crowding out of one generation by another, and it

is impious because the expelled are our fathers . . .140

VI. Child-bearing as a good and as an evil. — The solution of
the antinomy : in so far as the evil of child-bearing may be
abolished by child-bearing itself, it becomes a good (explanation) . 141

VII. The positive significance of the ecstasy of human love. —
It points to the hidden wholeness of the individual and to the way
of making it manifest. — Uselessness of the ecstasy of love for
animal procreation . . . . . .142

VIII. The essential inner connection between shame and pity.
Both are a reaction of the hidden wholeness of the human being
against (i) its individual division into sexes ; and (2) a further
division — resulting from that first one — of humanity into a number
of conflicting egoistic entities (shame as individual and pity as
social continence) . . . . . . .143

IX. The same is true with regard to (3) piety as religious con
tinence which opposes man's separation from the absolute centre

of life ........ 145

X. The one essence of morality is the 'wholeness of man rooted
in his nature as an abiding norm, and realised in the individual
and historical life as right-doing and struggle with the centrifugal
and dividing forces. — The norm-preserving element in shame. —
Modifications of the original (sexual) shame : conscience as
essentially inter-human shame, and the fear of God as religious
shame . . . . . . . . 146

XI. In so far as the wholeness of the human being (attained
in three directions) becomes a fact, the good coincides with happi
ness. — Since true happiness is conditioned by the moral good, the
ethics of pure duty cannot be opposed to eudaemonism in general,
which necessarily enters into it. — Human good fails to give com
plete satisfaction and happiness simply because it itself is never
complete and is never fully realised (explanations) . .150

XII. To be truly autonomous the good must be perfect, and
such a good is bound to involve happiness. — If the good and happi
ness are wrongly understood, empirical cases of virtue coinciding
or not coinciding with happiness are of no moral interest
whatever (instances) . . . . , . .152

XIII. Critical remarks concerning the insufficiency of Kantian
ethics . . . . . . . -153

xlviii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

XIV. Kant's religious postulates ill-founded. — Reality of the
super-human good, proved by the moral growth of humanity . 156

CHAPTER II

THE UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY.

I. Morality and the world of fact. — In shame man actually
separates himself off from material nature ; in pity he actually
manifests his essential connection with and similarity to other
living beings . . . . . . .160

II. In religious feeling the Deity is experienced as the actuality
of the perfect good ( = happiness) unconditionally and entirely
realised in itself. — The general basis of religion is the living
experience of the actual presence of the Deity, of the One which
embraces all (explanation) . . . . . .161

III. The reality of God is not a deduction from religious ex
perience but its immediate content — that which is experienced. —
Analysis of this content, as of a given relation of man to God,
from the point of view of (i) the difference between them ('the
dust of the earth' in us) ; (2) their ideal connection ('the image
of God ' in us) ; and (3) their real connection (' the likeness of God '
in us). — The complete religious relation is logically resolvable into
three moral categories: (i) imperfection in us; (2) perfection in
God; (3) attaining perfection as the task of our life . .164

IV. The psychological confirmation : 'joy in the Holy Spirit'
as the highest expression of religion. — The formally moral aspect
of the religious relation. — The duty ' to be perfect,' its ideal exten
sion and practical significance — ' become perfect '. . .166

V. Three kinds of perfection : (i) that which unconditionally
is in God (actus purus) ; (2) that which potentially is in the soul ;
(3) that which actually comes to be in the history of the world. —
Proof of the rational necessity of the process. A mollusc or a
sponge cannot express human thought and will, and a biological
process is necessary for creating a more perfect organism ; in
like manner the supreme thought and will (the Kingdom
of God) cannot be revealed among semi -animals, and requires
the historical process of making the forms of life more
perfect . . . . . . . .168

VI. The necessity of the universal process which follows from
the unconditional principle of the good. — The world as a system
of preliminary material conditions for the realisation of the
kingdom of ends. — The moral freedom of man as the final condition

of that realisation .... 170

CONTENTS xlix

PAGE

VII. The demands of religious morality : ' have God in you '
and ' regard everything in God's way.' — God's relation to evil. —
The full form of the categorical imperative as the expression of

the unconditional principle of morality . . . 173

VIII. The higher degrees of morality do not abolish the lower,
but when being realised in history presuppose them and are based
upon them. — Pedagogical aspect of the matter . . 1 74

IX. Natural altruism becomes deeper, higher, and wider in
virtue of the unconditional principle of morality. — The determining
power of that principle in relation to collective historical institu
tions intended for serving the good. — Our highest duty is not to
serve these institutions uncritically (since they may fail to fulfil their
destination), but to help them to serve the good or, if they swerve

from the right course, to point out their true duties . .176

X. When man's relation to the Deity is raised to the level of
absolute consciousness, the preserving feeling of continence (shame,
conscience, fear of God) is finally seen to safeguard not the relative
but the absolute dignity of man — his ideal perfection which is to
be realised. — Ascetic morality is now seen to have a positive
eschatological motive, namely, to re-create our bodily nature and
make it the destined abode of the Holy Spirit . . . 178

CHAPTER III

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER.

I. Since the reality of the spiritual is inseparable from the
reality of the material, the process — to be considered by moral
philosophy — whereby the universe attains perfection, being the
process of manifestation of God in man, must necessarily be
the process of manifestation of God in matter. — The series of the
concrete grades of being most clearly determined and characteristic
from the point of view of moral purpose realised in the world-
process— the five ' kingdoms ' : the mineral or inorganic, the
vegetable, the animal, the naturally human, and the spiritually
human or the kingdom of God. — Description and definition of
them. — Their external interrelation : inorganic substances nourish
the life of plants, animals exist at the expense of the vegetable
kingdom, men at the expense of animals, and the kingdom of God
consists of men (explanations). — The general character of the
ascent : just as a living organism consists of chemical substance
which has ceased to be mere substance, so natural humanity con
sists of animals who have ceased to be mere animals, and the king
dom of God consists of men who have ceased to be merely human

d

THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

but have entered into a new and higher plan of existence where
their purely human objects become the means and instruments of
another, final purpose ...... 180

II. The stone exists ; the plant exists and lives ; the animal,
in addition to this, is conscious of its life in its concrete states and
correlations, the natural man, existing, living, and being conscious
of his actual life, comes, besides, to be gradually aware of its
general meaning according to ideas ; the sons of God are called
to realise this meaning in all things to the end (explanation).— The
development of the human kingdom in the ancient world. — The
real limit — a living man-god (apotheosis of the Caesars). — As in
the animal kingdom the appearance of the anthropomorphic ape
anticipates the appearance of the real man, so in natural humanity

the deified Caesar is the anticipation of the true God-man . 183

III. The God-man as the first and essential manifestation of
the kingdom of God. — Reasons for believing in the historical
existence of Christ (as the God-man) from the point of view of

the evolution of the world rationally understood . . .186

IV. Positive unity of the world -process in its three aspects : (i)
the lower kingdoms form part of the moral order as the necessary
conditions of its realisation ; (2) each of the lower forms strives
towards a correspondingly higher form ; (3) each of the higher
forms physically (and psychologically) includes the lower. — The
process of gathering the universe together. — The task of the
natural man and humanity is to gather together the universe in
idea ; the task of the God-man and the divine humanity is to
gather the universe together in reality .... 188

V. Positive connection between the spiritual and the natural
man, between grace and natural goodness. — Historical confirmation

of the essential truth of Christianity . . . .190

VI. Christ as the perfect individual. — Reason why He first
appeared in the middle of history and not -at the end of it .193

VII. The perfect moral order presupposes the moral freedom
of each person, and true freedom is acquired by a finite spirit
through experience only : hence the necessity of historical develop
ment after Christ. — The ultimate significance of that development.
— The actual task morality has before it inevitably brings us into
the realm of conditions which determine the concrete historical
existence of society or of the collective man . . -193

CONTENTS li

PART III
THE GOOD THROUGH HUMAN HISTORY

CHAPTER I

PAGE

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY.

I. The separation between the individual and society as such

is nothing but a morbid illusion (explanation) . . .199

II. Human personality as such, in virtue of the reason and
will inherent in it, is capable of realising unlimited possibilities, in
other words, it is a special form with infinite content. — The
chimera of self-sufficient personality and the chimera of impersonal
society. — Society is involved in the very definition of personality as
a rationally knowing and morally active force, which is only
possible in social existence (proofs). — Society is the objectively
realisable content of the rational and moral personality — not its
external limit, but its essential complement. — It embodies the
indivisible wholeness of universal life, partly realised already
in the past (common tradition), partly realisable in the present
(social service) and anticipating the perfect realisation in the
future (the common ideal). — To these abiding moments of the
individually social life there correspond three main stages in
the historical development : the tribal (past) ; the nationally-
political (present) ; and the world-wide (future). — A clear distinc
tion between these grad' .. and aspects of life actually shows
itself in history as the successive transformation of one into
another and not as the exclusive presence of any one of these
forms ........ 200

III. Society is the completed or the expanded individual, and
the individual is the compressed or concentrated society. — The
historical task of morality lies not in creating a solidarity between
the individual and society but in rendering this solidarity conscious,
in transforming it from involuntary into voluntary, so that each
person should understand, accept, and carry out the common task

as his own ....... 203

IV. True morality is a right interaction between the individual
and his environment. — Man is from the first an individually-
social being, and the whole history is a process of gradually
deepening, widening, and raising to a higher level this two-sided,
individually-social life. Of these two indivisible and correlative
terms the individual is the movable, the dynamic element,

Hi THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

while society is the inert, conservative, and static element of
history. — There can be no opposition of principle between the
individual and society but only between the different stages of the
individually-social development ..... 204

V. The clan (in the wide sense) as the rudimentary embodi
ment of morality as a whole (religious, altruistic, and ascetic),
or as the realisation of the individual human dignity in the
narrowest and most fundamental social sphere (explanations and
proofs) ........ 206

VI. The moral content of the clan life is eternal, the form of
the clan is broken up by the historical process. — The general
course of this breaking up. — Transition from the clan through the
tribe to the nation and the state. — The profound significance of

the word ' fatherland ' ...... 207

VII. When a new and wider social whole (the fatherland) is
formed, the clan becomes the family (explanation). — The signifi
cance of the individual element in the transition from the

clan to the state . . . . . . .210

VIII. Every social group has only a relative and conditional
claim on man. — Social organisation, even of a comparatively high
type — e.g. the state — has no right at all over the eternal moral
content which is present even in the relatively lower forms of
lite — in the clan life, for instance (detailed explanation out of
Sophocles's Antigone) . . . . . .213

CHAPTER II

THE CHIEF MOMENTS IN THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF
THE INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS.

I. Moral progress (on its religious and altruistic side) corre
sponds to the social progress (explanatory remarks)

II. Achievements of civilisation as a condition of progress for
ascetic morality, which is not the work of individuals taken as
such, but of man as an individually-social being (historical ex
planation and confirmation). — Conditions which render conscious
ness of spiritual independence possible

III. Recognition by the human personality of its purely
negative or formal infinity without any definite content. — The
religion of Awakening : " I am above all this ; all this is empty."—
Buddhist confession of the ' three treasures ' : I believe in Buddha,
I believe in the doctrine, I believe in the community " — i.e. all is
illusion with the exception of three things worthy of belief : the
man who is spiritually awake, the words of awakening, and the
brotherhood of the awakened. — Buddhism as the first extant

CONTENTS liii

PAGE

stage of human universalism rising above the exclusive nationally-
political structure of pagan religion and society. — The moral
essence of the Buddhist doctrine : reverence for the first awakened,
the commandment of will-lessness and of universal benevolence . 227

IV. Criticism of Buddhism : its inner contradictions . . 230

V. Final definition of the Buddhist doctrine as religious and
moral nihilism (in the strict sense), which denies in principle every
object and every motive for reverence, pity, and spiritual struggle 233

VI. Logical transition from Hindu nihilism to Greek idealism.
— Greeks no less than Hindus felt the emptiness of sensuous
being : the pessimism of Greek poetry and philosophy. — But from
sensuous emptiness Greeks passed to the intelligible fulness of the
Ideas. — Statement of the Ideal theory (historical instances and
explanations) . . . . . . .236

VII. The impossibility of consistently contrasting the two
worlds. — Three relative and analogous wrongs (anomalies) of the
phenomenal world : the psychological (the subjection of reason
to passions), the social (the subjection of the wise man to the mob),
and the physical (the subjection of the living organic form to the
inorganic forces of substance in death). — Idealism attempts to
combat the first two anomalies but is blind and dumb to the
third. — The whole of our world (not only the mental and the
political but the physical as well) is in need of salvation, and the
Saviour is not the Hindu ascetic or the Greek philosopher but the
Jewish Messiah — not one who rejects life in the name of non-being
or in the name of abstract Ideas, but one who makes life whole

and raises it up for eternity ..... 240

VIII. Comparison between Buddhism, Platonism, and Christi
anity : negative universalism, one-sided universalism, and positive,
complete, or perfect universalism. — The weakness of Platonism
from the moral point of view. — Preparatory significance of Buddh
ism and Platonism ; their fruitlessness when they are taken to
be doctrines complete in themselves. — Christianity as an absolute
event, an absolute promise, and an absolute task . . . 244

CHAPTER III

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY.

I. The erroneous view which denies as a matter of principle
that morality has an objective task or is the work of the collective

man. — Statement of the question ..... 248

II. The insufficiency of morality as subjective feeling only. —
Historical confirmation . . . . . .250

III. The insufficiency of morality which addresses its demands

to individuals only. — Historical confirmation . . . 254

liv THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

IV. The demand for organised morality (theoretical explana
tion). — The degree of the individual's subordination to society
must correspond to the degree to which society itself is subordinate
to the moral good. Apart from its connection with the moral
good, social environment has no claim whatever upon the individual. 258

CHAPTER IV

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE.

I. The error of social realism, according to which social in
stitutions and interests have a supreme and decisive significance
in themselves. — Man is not merely a social animal. — The concep
tion of a social being is poorer in intension but wider in extension

than the conception of man. — Description of the social life of ants 261

II. The unconditional value of the individual for society. — No
man under any circumstances and for any reason may be regarded
as merely a means or an instrument — neither for the good of
another person, nor for the good of a group of persons, nor for the
so-called ' common good ' (explanations). — Religion, family, and
property in relation to the unconditional moral norm . . 264

III. Rights of man wrongly understood as the privilege of the
one (eastern monarchies) or of the few (classical aristocracies) or
of the many (democracies). — The three chief anomalies of the
ancient society — the denial of human dignity to the external
enemies, to slaves, and to criminals. — Progress of social morality
in the consciousness of the ancient world. — The absolute affirma
tion of human dignity in Christianity .... 268

IV. The task of the present is to make all social institutions
conformable to the unconditional moral norm and to struggle

with the collective evil . . . . . 272

CHAPTER V

THE NATIONAL QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW.

The collective evil as a threefold immoral relation : between
different nations, between society and the criminal, between
different classes of society . . . . . .276

I. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism. — Moral weakness of
nationalism ....... 277

II. The absence of strictly national divisions in the ancient
world. — Eastern monarchies and western city states did not
coincide with nations (historical references) . . .279

CONTENTS Iv

PAGE

III. Jews have never been merely a nation. — Christianity is
not negative cosmopolitanism, but positive super -national and
all-national universalism. It can as little demand absence of
nationality as absence of individuality (explanation and his
torical instances) ....... 282

IV. Universalism of new European nations. — Historical survey :
Italy, Spain, England, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Holland,
Sweden ........ 286

V. Deduction from the historical survey : a nation as a parti
cular form of existence derives its meaning and its inspiration
solely from its connection and its harmony with what is universal.
— Moral weakness of cosmopolitanism. — Positive duty involved in
the national question : love (in the ethical sense) all other nations

as your own (explanation) . .... 295

CHAPTER VI

THE PENAL QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW.

Statement of the question ..... 299

I. To be ethically right the opposition to crime must give
moral help to both parties. — The duty to defend the injured and
to bring the injurer to reason. — The two prevalent erroneous
doctrines deny either the one or the other aspect of the matter . 300

II. The conception of punishment as retribution. — Its root is in
the custom of blood vengeance of the patriarchal stage. — The trans
formation of this custom into legal justice, and the transference of

the duty of vengeance from the clan to the State . . . 302

III. The genesis of legal justice is wrongly taken to be its moral
justification. — Absurd arguments in favour of the savage conception

of punishment as revenge or retribution .... 306

IV. Immoral tendency to preserve cruel penalties. — Since the
absurdity of retribution is universally recognised, cruel penalties
are justified upon the principle of intimidation. — The essential
immorality of this principle. — Fatal inconsistency of its adherents . 310

V. The chaotic state of modern justice. — The doctrine of non-
resistance to evil as applied to the penal question. — Detailed
analysis and criticism of this doctrine . . . .314

VI. The moral principle admits neither of punishment as
intimidating retribution, nor of an indifferent relation to crime and
of allowing to commit crimes unhindered. — It demands real opposi
tion to crime as a just means of active pity, which legally and
compulsorily limits certain external manifestations of the evil will
not only for the sake of the safety of the community and of its
peaceful members, but also in the interest of the criminal himself. —

Ivi THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

Normal justice in dealing with crime must give, or at any rate aim
at, equal realisation of three rights : of the right of the injured
person to be protected, of the right of society to be safe, and of
the right of the injurer to be brought to reason and reformed. —
Temporary deprivation of liberty as the necessary preliminary con
dition for carrying out this task. — The consequences of the crime
for the criminal must stand in a natural inner connection with his
actual condition. — The necessity of reforming the penal laws in a
corresponding way : ' conditional sentences ' as the first step towards
such reformation . . . . . . .322

VII. The possibility of reforming the criminal ; the right and
the duty of society to care about it. — The necessary reform of
penal institutions . . . . . . .324

CHAPTER VII

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW.

I. The connection of criminality and national hostility with
the economic conditions. — The simple nature of the economic
problem. — Theoretically wrong solutions of it on the part of

the orthodox economists and of the socialists . . .326

II. Erroneous and immoral isolation of the economic sphere of
relations as though it were independent of the moral conditions of
human activity in general. — Free play of chemical processes can
only take place in a dead and decomposing body, while in the
living organism these processes are connected together and deter
mined by biological purposes. — There is not, and there never has
been, in human society a stage so low that the material necessity
for obtaining means of livelihood was not complicated by moral
considerations (explanations) . . . . .327

III. In its economic life, too, society must be an organised
realisation of the good. — The peculiarity and independence of
the economic sphere lies not in the fact that it has inexorable laws
of its own, but in the fact that from its very nature it presents a
special and peculiar field for the application of the one moral law.
— The ambiguous beginning and the bad end of socialism. — The
principle of the St. Simonists : the rehabilitation of matter. — The
true and important meaning of this principle : matter has a right
to be spiritualised by man. — This meaning soon gave way to
another : matter has the right to dominate man. — Gradual degenera
tion of socialism into economic materialism, which is inwardly and
essentially identical with plutocracy (explanation) . . -332

IV. The true solution of the economic question is in man's
moral relation to material nature (earth), conditioned by his moral

CONTENTS Ivii

PAGE

relation to men and to God. — The commandment of labour : with
effort to cultivate material nature for oneself and one's own, for all
humanity, and for the sake of the material nature itself. — The insuf
ficiency of the ' natural harmony ' of personal interests. — Criticism
of Bastiat's doctrine . . . . . • 33^

V. The duty of society to recognise and to secure to each the
right of worthy human existence. — The immorality of certain
conditions of labour (instances, confirmations, and explanations) . 340

VI. The main conditions which render human relations in the
sphere of material labour moral : (i) material wealth must not be
recognised as the independent purpose of man's economic activity ;
(2) production must not be at the expense of the human dignity
of the producers, and not a single one of them must become merely
a means of production ; (3) man's duties to the earth (material
nature in general) must be recognised (explanations). — The rights
of the earth. — Man's triple relation to the material nature: (i)
subjection to it ; (2) struggle with it and its exploitation j (3)
looking after it for one's own and its sake. — Without loving nature
foi its own sake one cannot organise the material life in a moral
way. — The connection between moral relation to the external nature

and the relation to one's body ..... 345

VII. It is insufficient to study the producing and the material
causes of labour. — Full definition of labour from the moral point
of view : labour is the interrelation of men in the physical sphere,
which interrelation must, in accordance with the moral law,
secure to all and each the necessary means of existing worthily and

' of perfecting all sides of one's being, and is finally destined to trans-

, form and spiritualise material nature .... 348

VIII. Analysis of the conception of property. — The relativity

of its grounds . . . ... . . 349

IX. The right of each to earn sufficient wages and to save. —
The normal origin of capital.- — The right and the duty of society
to limit the misuse of private property. — The striving of socialism
for an undesirable extension of this public right and duty. — The
moral meaning of the handed down or inherited (family) property.
— The special significance of family inheritance with regard to
landed property : it is necessary not to limit it, but, as far as
possible, to secure it to each family. — Objections answered . 354

X. Exchange and fraud. — Commerce as public service which
cannot have private gain for its sole or even its main object. — The
right and duty of society compulsorily to limit abuses in this
sphere. — Transition to the morally-legal question . . 358

Iviii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

CHAPTER VIII

PAGE

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE.

I. The unconditional moral principle, as a commandment of
or demand for perfection, contains in its very nature a recognition
of the relative element in morality, namely, of the real conditions
necessary for the attainment of perfection. — Comparative predomin
ance of this relative element constitutes the legal sphere of relations
and comparative predominance of the unconditional side — the
moral sphere in the strict sense . . . . .362

II. Alleged contradiction between legality and morality
(examples and explanations) . . . . .364

III. The different grades of moral and legal consciousness. —
The unchangeable legal norms or the natural right. — Legal con
servatism. — Progress in legality or the steady approximation of the
legal enactments to the norms of legality conformable to, though

not identical with, the moral norms . . . -3^5

IV. The close connection between morality and legal justice,
vitally important for both sides. — Verbal and etymological con
firmation of it . . . . . . . 367

V. Difference between legal and moral justice : (i) the un
limited character of the purely moral and the limited character of
the legal demands — in this respect legal justice is the lowest limit
or a definite minimum of morality ; (2) legal justice chiefly demands
an objective realisation of this minimum of good, or the actual aboli
tion of a certain amount of evil ; (3) in demanding such realisation

legal justice admits of compulsion ..... 369

VI. A general definition : legal justice is a compulsory demand
for the realisation of a definite minimum of good, or for an order
which does not allow of certain manifestations of evil. — The moral
ground for this : interests of morality demand personal freedom
as a condition of human dignity and moral perfection ; but man
can exist and consequently be free and strive for perfection in
society only ; moral interest, therefore, demands that the external
manifestations of personal liberty should be consistent with the
conditions of the existence of society, i.e. not with the ideal perfec
tion of some, but with the real security of all. — This security is not
safeguarded by the moral law itself, since for immoral persons it
does not exist, and is ensured by the compulsory juridical law which

has force for the latter also . . . . -371

VII. Positive legal justice as the historically-movable definition
of the necessary and compulsory balance between the two moral
interests of personal liberty and of the common good. — The moral
demand that each should be free to be immoral ; this freedom is

CONTENTS lix

PAGE

secured by positive laws (explanations). — The necessary limit to

the compulsion exercised by all collective organisations . .374

VIII. The legal view of crime .... 378

IX. From the very definition of legal justice it follows that the
interest of the common good can in each case only limit personal
liberty, but can never abolish it altogether. — Hence capital punish
ment and imprisonment for life is impermissible . . . 379

X. The three essential characteristics of law (publicity, con-
creteness, real applicability). — The sanction of the law. — Public
authority. — The three kinds of authority (legislative, juridical,
executive). — The supreme authority. — The state as the embodiment

of legal justice. — Limits to the legal organisation of humanity . 380

CHAPTER IX

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR.

I. Three questions are involved in the question of war : the
generally moral, the historical, and the personally-moral.— The
answer to the first question is indisputable : war is an anomaly

or an evil . . . . . . . -385

II. War as a relative evil (explanations). — Transition to the
question as to the historical meaning of war . . -387

III. Wars between clans naturally led to treaties and agree
ments as guarantees of peace. — The formation of the state. — The
organisation of war in the state as an important step towards the
coming of peace. — ' The world empires ' — their comparative char
acteristic. — Pax Romana. — Wars in which ancient history abounds
increased the sphere of peace. — Military progress in the ancient
world was at the same time a great social and moral progress, since

it enormously decreased the proportion of lives sacrificed in war . 389

IV. Christianity has abolished war in principle ; but until this
principle really enters human consciousness, wars are inevit
able, and may, in certain conditions, be the lesser evil, i.e. a
relative good. — The Middle Ages. — In modern history three general
facts are important with reference to the question of war: (i)
Most nations have become independent political wholes or ' perfect
bodies ' ; (2) international relations of all kinds have been de
veloped ; (3) European culture has spread throughout the globe
(explanations). — The war-world of the future .. . . 394

V. The general historical meaning of all wars is the struggle
between Europe and Asia — first local and symbolical (the Trojan
war), finally extending to the whole of the globe. — The end of
external wars will make clear the great truth that external peace is

Ix THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

not as such a real good, but becomes a good only in connection

with the inner (moral) regeneration of humanity . . . 399

VI. The subjectively moral attitude to war. — False identifica
tion of war and military service with murder. — War as the conflict
between collective organisms (states) and their collective organs
(armies) is not the affair of individual men who passively take part
in it ; on their part possible taking of life is accidental only. —
Refusal to perform military service required by the state is of
necessity a greater moral evil, and is therefore impermissible. —
Moral duty of the individual to take part in the defence of his
country. — It is grounded on the unconditional principle of morality
(explanatory instances). — Unquestionable dangers of militarism
are not an argument against the necessity of armaments. — Biblical
illustration ....... 402

VII. It is our positive duty not merely to defend or protect
our fatherland, but also to bring it to greater perfection, which is
inseparable from the general moral progress of humanity. — To
approach a good and lasting peace one must act against the evil
root of war, namely, against hostility and hatred between the parts
of the divided humanity. — In history war has been the direct means
of the external and the indirect means of the internal unification
of humanity ; reason forbids us to throw up this means so long as
it is necessary, and conscience commands us to strive that it should
cease to be necessary, and that the natural organisation of humanity,
divided into hostile parts, should actually become a moral or spiritual
unity ........ 406

CHAPTER X

THE MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY AS A WHOLE.

I. Differences between the natural and the moral human solid
arity, which Christianity puts before us as a historical task, de
manding that all should freely and consciously strive for perfection
in the one good. — The true subject of this striving is the individual
man together <with and inseparably from the collective man. — The
three permanent embodiments of the subject striving for perfection,
or the three natural groups which actually give completion to the in
dividual life : the family, the fatherland, humanity. — Corresponding
to them in the historical order we have the three stages — the tribal,
the nationally political, and the spiritually universal ; the latter may
become actually real only on condition that the first two are spiritual
ised. — The concrete elements and forms of life as conditional data
for the solution of an unconditional problem. — The given natural
bond between three generations (grandparents, parents, children)
must be transformed into the unconditionally moral one through the
spiritualisation of the family religion, of marriage, and education . 409

CONTENTS Ixi

PAGE

II. Homage paid to the forefathers. — Its eternal significance
recognised even in the savage cults. — Christian modification of the
ancient cult . . . . . . .411

III. Marriage. — It unites man with God through the present,
just as religious regard for the forefathers unites man with God
through the past. — In true marriage the natural sexual tie is not
abolished but transubstantiated. — The necessary data for the moral
problem of such transubstantiation are the natural elements of the
sexual relation : (i) carnal desire ; (2) being in love ; (3) child-
bearing. — Marriage remains the satisfaction of the sexual desire,
but the object of that desire is no longer the satisfaction of the
animal organism, but the restoration of the image of God in man. —
Marriage as a form of asceticism, as holy exploit and martyrdom.
— Child - bearing, unnecessary and impossible in a perfect
marriage, is necessary and desirable in a marriage which strives
after perfection ; it is a necessary consequence of the perfection not

yet attained, and a natural means of attaining it in the future . 415

IV. The purpose of the bringing up of children in a spiritually
organised family is to connect the temporary life of the new genera
tion with the eternal good, which is common to all generations,

and restores their essential unity . . . . .418

V. True education must at one and the same time be both
traditional and progressive. — Transferring to the new generation all
the spiritual heritage of the past, it must at the same time develop
in it the desire and the power to make use of this heritage as of a
living moving power for a new approach to the supreme goal. —
Fatal consequences of separating the two aspects. — The moral basis
of education is to inspire the descendants with a living concern for
the future of their ancestors (explanation). — Moral progress can only
consist in carrying out further and better the duties which follow
from tradition. — The supreme principle of pedagogy is the indis
soluble bond between generations which support one another in
carrying out progressively the one common task of preparing for the
manifestation of the kingdom of God and for universal resurrection 421

VI. The normal family is the immediate restoration of the
moral wholeness of man in one essential respect — that of succession
of generations (the order of temporal sequence). — This wholeness
must be also restored in the wider order of coexistence — first of all
within the limits of the nation or the fatherland. — In accordance
with the nature of moral organisation, the nation does not
abolish either the family or the individual, but fills them with a
vital content in a definite national form, conditioned by language.
— This form must be peculiar but not exclusive : the normal
multiplicity of different languages does not necessitate their
isolation and separateness. — The Babylonian principle of the
division of humanity through identity in confusion and the Sion

Ixii THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

PAGE

principle of gathering mankind together through unanimity in
distinctness. — The true universal language means the community
and understandability of many separate languages which, though
divided, do not divide . . . . . .423

VII. The unity of mankind. — All the grounds which justify
us in speaking of the unity of a people have still greater force when
applied to humanity. — The unity of origin ; the unity of language,
irrespective of the number of different tongues ; the unity of
universal history apart from which there can be no national history
(proofs and explanations). — The indivisibility of the moral good.
— The evil of exclusive patriotism. — Humanity as the subject of
moral organisation. — Transition to the discussion of the universal
forms of the moral order ...... 426

VIII. The universal Church as the organisation of piety
(explanation). — The essence of the Church is the unity and holiness
of the Godhead in so far as it remains and positively acts in the
world through humanity (or, what is the same thing, the Church
is the creation gathered together in God). — The unity and holiness
of the Church in the order of coexistence is its catholicity or whole
ness and, in the order of succession, is the apostolic succession. —
Catholicity abolishes all divisions and separations, preserving all

the distinctions and peculiarities ..... 432

IX. Participation in the absolute content of life through the
universal Church positively liberates and equalises all, and unites
men in a perfect brotherhood which presupposes a perfect father
hood 435

X. The religious principle of fatherhood is that the spiritual
life does not spring from ourselves. — Hence messengership or apostle-
ship in contradistinction to imposture. — Christ 'sent of God ' and
doing the will of the Father who sent Him and not His own will
is the absolute prototype of apostleship. — Its continuation in the
Church : " As my Father sent me, so I send you." — Since filial
relation is the prototype of piety, the only-begotten Son of God
— the Son by pre-eminence — being the embodiment of piety is the
way, the truth, and the life of His Church, as of an organisation
of piety in the world. — The way of piety is the way of hierarchy
— it is from above (the significance of ordination and consecration).
— The truth of the Church is not, at bottom, either scientific, or
philosophical, or even theological, but simply contains the dogmas
of piety ; the general meaning of the seven CEcumenical Councils.

— The life of piety ; the meaning of the seven sacraments . 437

XL The question as to the relation of the Church to the state

or the problem of the Christian state. — Important instance in the

New Testament (the story of Cornelius the centurion) . . 440

XII. Moral necessity of the state. — Explanations with regard

to Christianity ....... 443

CONTENTS Ixiii

PAGE

XIII. The state as collectively -organised pity. — Vladimir
Monomakh and Dante (explanation) . ."" . . 447

XIV. Analysis of the objection generally urged against the
definition of the normal state ..... 449

XV. Analysis of legal misunderstandings . . .451

XVI. In addition to the general conservative task of every
state — to preserve the essentials of common life, without which
humanity could not exist — the Christian state has also a progressive
task of improving the conditions of that life by furthering the free
development ot all human powers destined to bring about the
coming of the kingdom of God (explanation) . . -455

XVII. The normal relation between the Church and the state.
: — From the Christian (the divinely-human) point of view both the

independent activity of man and his whole-hearted devotion to
God are equally necessary ; but the two can only be combined if
the two spheres of life (the religious and the political) and its two
immediate motives (piety and pity) are clearly distinguished-
corresponding to the difference in the immediate objects of action,
the final purpose being one and the same. — Fatal consequences
of the separation of the Church from the state and of either
usurping the functions of the other. — The Christian rule of social
progress consists in this, that the state should as little as possible
coerce the inner moral life of man, leaving it to the free spiritual
activity of the Church, and at the same time secure as certainly
and as widely as possible the external conditions in which men can
live worthily and become more perfect .... 457

XVIII. The special moral task of the economic life is to be
the collectively-organised abstinence from the evil carnal passions,
in order that the material nature — individual and universal —
could be transformed into a free form of the human spirit. — The
separation of the economic life from its object at the present time

and historical explanation of that fact .... 460

XIX. Moral significance of the law of conservation of energy.
— The value of the collectively-organised abstinence depends upon
the success of the collective organisations of piety and pity. — The
unity of the three tasks ...... 465

XX. Individual representatives of the moral organisation of
humanity. — The three supreme callings — that of the priest, the
king, and the prophet. — Their distinctive peculiarities and mutual
dependence ....... 467

CONCLUSION

THE FINAL DEFINITION OF THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE AND

THE TRANSITION TO THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY . 470

INTRODUCTION

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE

THE subject-matter of moral philosophy is the idea of the good ;
the purpose of this philosophical inquiry is to make clear the
content that reason, under the influence of experience, puts into
this idea, and thus to give a definite answer to the essential
question as to what ought to be the object or the meaning of
our life.

The capacity of forming rudimentary judgments of value is
undoubtedly present in the higher animals, who, in addition to
pleasant and unpleasant sensations^ possess more or less complete
ideas of desirable or undesirable objects. Man passes beyond
single sensations and particular images and rises to a universal
rational concept or idea of good and evil.

The universal character of this idea is often denied, but this
is due to a misunderstanding. It is true that every conceivable
kind of iniquity has at some time and in some place been
regarded as a good. But at the same time there does not exist,
nor ever has existed, a people which did not attribute to its idea
of the good (whatever that idea might be) the character of being
a universal and abiding norm and ideal.1 A Red Indian who
considers it a virtue to scalp as many human heads as possible,
takes it to be good and meritorious, not for one day merely but

1 In these preliminary remarks, which are merely introductory, I intentionally take
the idea of the good in its original complexity, i.e. not merely in the sense of the moral
worth of our actions, but also in the sense of objects which are generally regarded as
desirable to possess or to enjoy (" all one's goods," etc.). Some doctrines deny that
there is any such distinction, and I cannot presuppose it before the matter has been
subjected to a philosophical analysis.

I B

2 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

for all his life, and not for himself alone, but for every decent
man. An Esquimo whose idea of the highest good is the
greatest possible supply of putrid seal and cod-fish fat, undoubtedly
regards his ideal as of universal application ; he is convinced that
what is good for him is also good for all times and all people,
and even for the world beyond the grave ; and if he be told of
barbarians to whom putrid fat is disgusting, he will either dis
believe that they exist or will deny that they are normal. In
the same way, the famous Hottentot who maintained that it is
good when he steals a number of cows and bad when they are
stolen from him^ did not intend this ethical principle for himself
only, but meant that for every man the good consisted in
successful appropriation of other people's property, and evil in
the loss of one's own.

Thus even this extremely imperfect application of the idea
of the good undoubtedly involves its formal universality, i.e. its
affirmation as a norm for all time and for all human beings,
although the content of the supposed norm (i.e. the particular
answers to the question, What is good ?) does not in any way
correspond to this formal demand, being merely accidental,
particular, and crudely material in character. Of course the
moral ideas even of the lowest savage are not limited to scalped
heads and stolen cows : the same Iroquois and Hottentots manifest
a certain degree of modesty in sexual relations, feel pity for those
dear to them, are capable of admiring other people's superiority.
But as long as these rudimentary manifestations of true morality
are found side by side with savage and inhuman demands, or even
give precedence to the latter, as long as ferocity is prized above
modesty, and rapacity above compassion, it has to be admitted that
the idea of the good, though preserving its universal form, is
devoid of its true content.

The activity of reason which gives rise to ideas is inherent in
man from the first, just as an organic function is inherent in
the organism. It cannot be denied that alimentary organs and
their functions are innate in the animal ; but no one takes this
to mean that the animal is born with the food already in its
mouth. In the same way, man is not born with ready-made
ideas, but only with a ready-made faculty of being conscious
of ideas.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 3

The rational consciousness in virtue of which man possesses
from the first a universal idea of the good as an absolute norm,
in its further development gradually supplies this formal idea with
a content worthy of it. It seeks to establish such moral demands
and ideals as would in their very essence be universal and
necessary, expressing the inner development of the universal
idea of the good and not merely its external application to
particular material motives foreign to it. When this work of
human consciousness developing a true content of morality, attains
a certain degree of clearness and distinctness, and is carried on
in a systematic way, it becomes moral philosophy or ethics. The
different ethical systems and theories exhibit various degrees of
completeness and self-consistency.

II

In its essence moral philosophy is most intimately connected
with religion, and in its relation to knowledge with the theoretical
philosophy. It cannot at this stage be explained what the
nature of the connection is, but it is both possible and necessary to
explain what it is not. It must not be conceived of as a one
sided dependence of ethics on positive religion or on speculative
philosophy — a dependence which would deprive the moral sphere
of its special content and independent significance. The view
which wholly subordinates morality and moral philosophy to the
theoretical principles of positive religion or philosophy is extremely
prevalent in one form or another. The erroneousness of it is
all the more clear to me because I myself at one time came
very near it, if indeed I did not share it altogether. Here are
some of the considerations which led me to abandon this point of
view j I give only such as can be understood before entering
upon an exposition of moral philosophy itself.

The opponents of independent morality urge that "only true
religion can give man the strength to realise the good ; but the
whole value of the good is in its realisation ; therefore apart from
true religion ethics has no significance." That true religion
does give its true followers the strength to realise the good,
cannot be doubted. But the one-sided assertion that such
strength is given by religion alone^ though it is supposed to be

4 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

made in the higher interests of religion, in truth, directly
contradicts the teaching of the great defender of faith, St. Paul,
who admits, it will be remembered, that the heathen can do good
according to the natural law. " For when the Gentiles," he
writes, "which have not the law, do by nature the things
contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto
themselves : which show the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts
the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another." l

In order to receive the power for realising the good, it is
necessary to have a conception of the good — otherwise its realisations
will be merely mechanical. And it is not true that the whole
value of good is in the fact of its realisation : the way in which
it is realised is also important. An unconscious automatic
accomplishment of good actions is below the dignity of man
and consequently does not express the human good. The
human realisation of the good is necessarily conditioned by a
consciousness of it, and there can be consciousness of the good'apart
from true religion as is shown both by history and by everyday
experience, and confirmed by the testimony of so great a
champion of the faith as St. Paul.2

Further, though piety requires us to admit that the power
for the realisation of the good is given from God, it would be
impious to limit the Deity with regard to the means whereby
this power can be communicated. According to the witness
both of experience and of the Scriptures, such means are not
limited to positive religion, for even apart from it some men are
conscious of the good, and practise it. So that from the religious
point of view also, we must simply accept this as true, and
consequently admit that in a certain sense morality is independent
of the positive religion and moral philosophy of a creed.3

1 "Orav yap t6vi) TO. /J.T] v6fj.ov ^x°VTa 4>6(rei. TO, TOV vb/j-ov TTOITJ, OVTOL VO/JLOV (JLT)
€~XOVT€S eaurots fieri t>6/j.os' oinves ^vdfiKvvvrai. TO £pyov TOV v6/j.ov ypawTov kv rat's
Kapdlau avTwv, <rvfJ,/J.apTvpovffrjs avTu>i> TJJS crwetS^crews Kal fieTa^v dXX^Xwv rCiv
\oyiGp.<Ji}v Ka.TT)yopovvTWi> ?) Kal a,Tro\oyov/j.4vit)j'. — ROM. ii. 14-15.

2 What St. Paul says of the Gentiles of his time is no doubt applicable to men
who in the Christian era were unable to accept Christianity either because they had
not heard of it or because it had been misrepresented to them. And when they do
good they do it according to the natural law "written in their hearts."

8 Of course, what is here denied is dependence in the strict sense, i.e. such a
relation between two objects that one of them is entirely presupposed by the other and

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 5

A third consideration leads to the same conclusion. However
great our certainty of the truth of our own religion may be,
it does not warrant our overlooking the fact that there exists a
number of religions, and that each of them claims for itself to be
the only true one. And this fact creates in every mind that is
not indifferent to truth a desire for an objective justification of
our own faith — for such proof in favour of it, that is, as would be
convincing not only to us but also to others, and, finally, to all.
But all the arguments in favour of religious truth which are
universally applicable amount to a single fundamental one — the
ethical argument, which affirms that our faith is morally
superior to others. This is the case even when the moral
interest is completely concealed by other motives. Thus in
support of one's religion one may point to the beauty of its
church services. This argument must not be dismissed too
lightly. Had not the beauty of the Greek service in the
cathedral of St. Sophia impressed the envoys of prince Vladimir
of Kiev as much as it did, Russia would probably not have
been Orthodox now. But whatever the importance of this
side of religion may be, the question is in what precisely does
the aesthetic value of one service as compared with another
consist ? It certainly does not lie in the fact that its form and
setting should be distinguished by any kind of beauty. Beauty
of form as such (i.e. the perfection of the sensuous expression of
anything) may attach to the most diverse objects. A ballet, an
opera, a military or an erotic picture, a firework, may all be
said to have a beauty of their own. But the introduction of
such manifestations of the beautiful, in however small a degree,
into a religious cult, is rightly censured as incompatible with its
true dignity. The aesthetic value of a religious service does not
then lie merely in the perfection of its sensuous form, but in its
expressing as clearly and as fully as possible the spiritual contents

cannot exist apart from it. All I maintain so far is that ethics is not in this sense
dependent upon positive religion, without at all prejudging the question as to the
actual connection between them or their mutual dependence in concreto. As to the
so-called natural or rational religion, the very conception of it has arisen on the
ground of moral philosophy and, as will be shown in its due course, has no meaning
apart from it. At present I am only concerned with the view which has, of late,
become rather prevalent, that the moral life is wholly determined by the dogmas and
institutions of a positive religion and must be entirely subordinate to them.

6 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

of true religion. These contents are largely dogmaticj/but chiefly
ethical (in the wide sense) — the holiness of God, His love for
men, the , gratitude and the devotion of men to their Heavenly
Father, their brotherhood with one another. This ideal essence,
embodied in the persons and events of sacred history, finds, through
this sacred historical prism, new artistic incarnation in the rites,
the symbols, and the anthems of the Church. The spiritual
essence of religion appeals to some men only as thus embodied in
the cult, while other men (whose number increases as conscious
ness develops) are able, in addition, to apprehend it directly as a
doctrine ; and in this case again the moral side of religious
beauty clearly predominates over the dogmatic side. The meta
physical dogmas of true Christianity, in spite of all their inward
certainty, are undoubtedly above the level of ordinary human
reason, and therefore have never been, nor ever can be, the
original means of convincing non-Christians of the truth of our
religion. In order to realise the truth of these dogmas by faith,
one must already be a Christian ; and in order to realise their
meaning in the sphere of abstract thought, one must be a philo
sopher of the school of Plato or of Schelling. And as this cannot
be possible for every one, all that remains for persuading people
belonging to other religions of the truth of our faith is its moral
superiority.1 And indeed, in the disputes between the different
branches of one and the same religion, as well as between
different religions, each side seeks to justify its own faith by
means of moral and practical arguments. Thus Roman
Catholics most readily quote in their own favour the solidarity
and the energetic work of their clergy, united by the religious
and moral power of the papal monarchy, the unique moral
influence of their clergy on the masses of the people, the part the
Pope plays as the defender of universal justice and the supreme
judge and peacemaker ; and they especially point to the multitude
of works of charity in their missions at home and abroad.
Protestants, who originally separated off from the Roman Church
precisely on the ground of moral theology, claim in their turn as
their essential advantage the moral loftiness and purity of their

1 One of my critics — heaven judge him ! — took me to mean that that religion is
true to which the greatest number of good people belong. I wish he had suggested
some method for such moral statistics !

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 7

doctrine which liberates the individual conscience and the life of
the community from many practical abuses and from slavery to
external observances and to traditions, in their view, senseless.
Finally, the champions of Orthodoxy in their polemic against
Western Christianity generally have recourse to moral accusa
tions. They accuse the Roman Catholics of pride and love of
power, of striving to appropriate for the head of their Church that
which belongs to God as well as that which belongs to Caesar ;
they accuse the Roman Catholic clergy of fanaticism, of loving the
world and of cupidity, make it responsible for the sin of persecut
ing heretics and infidels. Like the Protestants they lay stress
on three main charges — the Inquisition^ Indulgences, and Jesuit
morality ; and finally, independently of the Protestants, they
bring against the Roman Catholics the charge of moral fratricide
which found expression in the arbitrary adoption by the latter
(without the knowledge of the Eastern Church) of the local Western
traditions. The moral charges they bring against Protestantism
are less striking but just as serious. They accuse it of in
dividualism which does away with the Church as a concrete moral
whole, they reproach it with destroying the bond of love not
only between the present and the past of the historical Church
(by rejecting the traditions), but also between the visible and the
invisible Church (by rejecting prayers for the dead, etc.).

Without going into theology or pronouncing on the value of
or the need for such disputes l I would only draw attention to
the fact that neither of the disputants rejects the moral principles
proclaimed by the other side, but simply tries to turn them to his
own account. Thus when the Roman Catholics boast of works
of charity which especially characterise their Church, neither
their Protestant nor their Greco-Russian opponents would say
that charity is a bad thing ; they would merely argue that the
Roman Catholic charitable institutions serve the purposes of
ambition, and, being thus vitiated by extraneous elements, more
or less lose their moral worth. In answer to this, the Roman
Catholics, for their part, would not say that ambition is a good
thing or that Christian charity must be subordinate to worldly

1 Concerning the reproach in ' moral fratricide ' see my article in Dogmatitcheskoe
Raxvitic Tserkvi (The Dogmatic Development of the Church] in the Pra-voslavnoe Obozrenie
for 1 88s.

8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

considerations, but would, on the contrary, repudiate the charge of
ambition and argue that power is not for them an end in itself,
-but only a necessary means for carrying out their moral duty.
Similarly when the Orthodox — as well as the Roman Catholics —
reproach the Protestants with their lack of filial piety and their
contempt for the Patristic tradition, no sensible Protestant would
urge that tradition ought to be despised, but would, on the
contrary, try to prove that Protestantism is a return to the
most honourable and ancient traditions of Christianity, freed
from any false and pernicious admixture.

It is clear, then, that the disputing parties stand on one and the
same moral ground (which alone renders dispute possible), that
they have the same moral principles and standards, and that the
dispute is merely about their application. These principles do
not as such belong to any denomination, but form a general
tribunal to which all equally appeal. The representative of each
side says in fact to his opponent simply this : " I practise better
than you the moral principles which you, too, wish to follow ;
therefore you must give up your error and acknowledge that I am
right." The ethical standards, equally presupposed by all denomi
nations, cannot themselves, then, depend upon denominational
differences.

But morality proves to be just as independent of the more
important religious differences. When a missionary persuades a
Mahomedan or a heathen of the moral superiority of the Christian
teaching he evidently presupposes that his listener has the same
moral standards as his own, at least, in a potential form.

This means that the norms which are common both to the
Christian and to the heathen, and are ' written ' in the latter's
heart, are altogether independent of positive religion. Besides, in
so far as all positive religions, including the absolutely true one,
appeal in the disputes to the universal moral norms, they admit
that in a certain sense they are dependent upon the latter. Thus
during a judicial trial both the right and the wrong party are
equally subordinate to the law ; and inasmuch as they have
both appealed to it, they have acquiesced in such subordination.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE

III

Moral philosophy has then a subject-matter of its own (the
moral norms) independent of particular religions, and even in a
sense presupposed by them ; thus on its objective or real side it is
self-contained. The question must now be asked whether on its
formal side — as a science — moral philosophy is subordinate to
theoretical philosophy, especially to that part of it which examines
the claims and the limitations of our cognitive faculty. But in
working out a moral philosophy, reason simply unfolds, on the
ground of experience, the implications of the idea of the good (or,
what is the same thing, of the ultimate fact of moral consciousness)
which is inherent in it from the first. In doing this, reason does ^
not go beyond its own boundaries ; in scholastic language its use
here is immanent^ and is therefore independent of this or of that
solution of the question as to the transcendent knowledge of things
in themselves. To put it more simply, in moral philosophy we are
concerned with our inward relation to our own activities, i.e. with
something that can unquestionably be known by us, for it has its
source in ourselves. The debatable question as to whether we can
know that which belongs to other realms of being, independent
of us, is not here touched upon. The ideal content of morality is
apprehended by reason which has itself created it ; in this case,
therefore, knowledge coincides with its object (is adequate to it)
and leaves no room for critical doubt. The progress and the
results of this process of thought answer for themselves, pre
supposing nothing but the general logical and psychological
conditions of all mental activity. Ethics makes no claim to a
theoretical knowledge of any metaphysical essences and takes no
part in" the dispute between the dogmatic and the critical philo
sophy, the first of which affirms, and the second denies, the
reality, and consequently the possibility, of such knowledge.

In spite of this formal and general independence of ethics of
the theoretical philosophy, there are two metaphysical questions
which may apparently prove fatal to the very existence of
morality.

The first question is this. The starting point of every serious
speculation is the doubt as to the objective validity of our know-

io THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

ledge : Do things exist as they are known to us ? The doubt
about our knowledge gradually leads us to doubt the very existence
of that which is known^ i.e. of the world and all that is in it.
This world is made up of our sense perceptions which the
understanding unites into one coherent whole. But is not the
perceived merely our sensation and the connectedness of things
merely our thought ? And if this be so, if the world as a whole
be only my presentation, then all the beings to whom I stand in
the moral relation prove also to be nothing but my presentations,
for they are inseparable parts of the presented world, given in
knowledge like everything else. Now moral rules, or at least a
considerable number of them, determine my right relation to
other people. If other people do not exist, do not these moral
rules themselves become objectless and unrealisable ? This
would be the case if the non-existence of other human beings
could be known with the same indubitable certainty which
attaches to moral precepts in their sphere. If while my con
science definitely compelled me to act morally in relation to
certain objects, theoretical reason proved with equal definiteness
that these objects did not exist at all, and that therefore rules
of action relating to them were meaningless — if practical
certainty were thus undermined by equal theoretical certainty,
and the categoric character of the precept were negated by the
indubitable knowledge of the impossibility of carrying it out —
then indeed the position would be hopeless. But in truth there
is no such conflict between two equal certainties, and there
cannot be. Doubt as to the independent existence of external
things is not, and can never become, certainty of their non-exist
ence. Suppose it were proved that our senses and our under
standing are untrustworthy witnesses as to the existence of other
beings, the untrustworthiness of the witnesses mefely makes their
testimony doubtful, but does not make the opposite true. Even if
it were positively proved that a given witness had falsely testified
to a fact which in reality he had not witnessed at all, it would be
impossible to conclude from this that the fact itself never existed.
Other witnesses might vouch for it, or indeed it might not have
been witnessed by any one and yet be a fact. Our senses and our
intellect tell us of the existence of human beings other than our
selves. Suppose that investigation were to show that this is false,

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE n

and that these means of knowledge warrant the existence of objects
as our presentations only and not their existence as independent
realities — which we consequently begin to doubt. But to go
further and replace our former certitude of the existence of other
beings by the certitude of the opposite and not merely by doubt
would only be possible on the supposition that whatever is not
actually contained in our senses and our thought cannot exist at
all. This, however, is quite an arbitrary assumption, for which
there is neither logical ground nor any reasonable foundation.

If we cannot in relation to the existence of other selves go
further than doubt, we may rest satisfied about the fate of
moral principles ; for theoretical doubt is evidently insufficient to
undermine moral and practical certainty. It must also be
remembered that critical doubt is not the final point of view of
philosophy, but is always overcome in one way or another. Thus
Kant draws the distinction between phenomena and noumena
(appearances and things in themselves), restoring to the objects of
moral duty as noumena the full measure of independent existence
which as phenomena they do not possess. Other thinkers dis
cover new and more trustworthy witnesses of the existence of the
external world than sense and thought (Jacobi's immediate faith ^
Schopenhauer's Will which is experienced as the root of our own
reality, and, by analogy, of that of other beings), or they work out
a system of a new and more profound speculative dogmatism
which re-establishes the objective significance of all that is.
(Schelling, Hegel, and others.)

But however great the force and the significance of the critical
doubt as to the existence of other beings may be, it has bearing
merely on one aspect of morality. Every ethical precept as such
touches upon the object of the action (other men) only with its outer
end, so to speak ; the real root of it is always within the agent
and cannot therefore be affected by any theory — whether positive
or negative — of the external world. And the external aspect of
the moral law which links it to the object belongs, properly
speaking, to the sphere of legal justice and not of morality in
the narrow sense. As will be shown in due course legal justice
depends upon morality and cannot be separated from it, but this
does not prevent us from clearly distinguishing the two spheres.
When one and the same action, e.g. murder, is condemned

12 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

equally by a criminologist and by a moralist, they both refer to
one and the same totality of psychological moments resulting
in the material fact of taking life, and the conclusions are
identical, but the starting point and the whole train of reasoning
is entirely different and opposed in the two cases. From the
legal point of view, what is of primary significance is the
objective fact of murder — an action which violates another
person's rights and characterises the culprit as an abnormal
member of society. To make that characteristic full and
complete, the inner psychological moments must also be taken
into account, first and foremost among them being the presence
of criminal intention, the so-called animus of the crime. But the
subjective conditions of the action are of interest solely in their
relation to the fact of murder, or in causal connection with it.
If a man breathed vindictiveness and murder all his life, but his
subjective mental state found no expression in actual murder nor
attempt at one, nor in any violence, that person in spite of all
his diabolical malice would not come wilhin the range of the
criminologist as such. On the contrary, from the moral point
of view, the slightest emotion of malice or anger, even though it
never expressed itself in action or speech, is in itself a direct
object of ethical judgment and condemnation ; and the fact of
murder from this point of view has significance not on its
material side, but simply as an expression of the extreme degree
of the evil feeling which throughout all its stages is deserving of
moral condemnation. For a criminologist murder is an infringe
ment of right or a loss unlawfully inflicted upon the victim and
upon the social order. But from the purely moral point of view,
being deprived of life is not necessarily a loss, and may even be a gain
for the victim ; murder is an unquestionable loss for the murderer
alone, not as a fact, but as the culminating point of the malice
which is in itself a loss to a man in so far as it lowers his dignity
as a rational being. Of course, from the ethical point of view,
too, murder is worse than a mere outburst of anger. But this
is simply because the former involves a greater degree of the
same evil passion than the latter, and it is certainly not because
one is a harmful action and the other merely a feeling. If with the
firm intention of causing death to his enemy a man stabs a wax
effigy, he is from the "moral point of view a full-fledged murderer,

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 13

though he has killed no one and interfered with no one's
rights ; but for this very reason, from the legal point of view
his action is not even remotely akin to murder, and is at most
an insignificant damage to another person's property.

Extreme idealism which recognises the subject's inner states
as alone real does not deny that there exist qualitative differences
between these states, expressing a greater or lesser degree of
activity in the self. Therefore from this point of view also our
actions, in spite of the illusory character of their object, preserve
their full moral significance as indicative of our spiritual
condition. Thus the feeling of anger or malice, e.g., indicates
like every other passion the passivity of the spirit or its inward
subordination to the illusory appearances, and is in that sense
immoral. It is clear that the degree of immorality is directly
proportionate to the strength of the passion or to the degree of
our passivity. The stronger the passion, the greater passivity
of the spirit does it indicate. Therefore a passion of anger
leading to premeditated murder is more immoral than a passing
irritability, quite apart from the theoretical question as to the
illusory character of external objects. Even from the point of
view of subjective idealism, then, bad actions are worse than bad
emotions which do not lead to actions.

The conclusion that follows from this is clear. If the
universe were merely my dream, this would be fatal only to the
objective, the external side of ethics (in the broad sense), and not
to its own inner sphere ; it would destroy my interest in
jurisprudence, politics, in social questions, in philanthropy, but it
would not affect the individually moral interests or the duties
to myself. I should cease to care about safeguarding the rights
of others, but would still preserve my own inner dignity. Not
feeling any tender compassion for the phantoms surrounding me,
I should be all the more bound to refrain from evil or shameful
passions in relation to them. If it be opposed to moral dignity
to bear malice against a living human being, it is all the more
so against a mere phantom ; if it be shameful to fear that which
exists, it is still more shameful to fear that which does not exist ;
if it be shameful and contrary to reason to strive for the material
possession of real objects, it is no less shameful and far more
irrational to entertain such a desire with regard to phantoms of

one's own imagination. Quite apart from the theory that all
that exists is a dream, when in the ordinary way we dream of
doing something immoral we feel ashamed of it even after
awakening. Of course if I dream that I have killed some one, on
waking I am not so much ashamed of my action as pleased at
its having been only a dream ; but of the vindictive feeling
experienced in the dream I am ashamed even when awake.

In view of all these considerations, the following general
conclusion seems inevitable. Theoretical philosophy (namely, the
critique of knowledge) may engender doubt as to the existence
of the objects of morality, but it certainly cannot create a
conviction of their non-existence. The doubt (which, however,
is disposed of, in one way or another, by the theoretical
philosophy itself) cannot outweigh the certainty which attaches
to the deliverances of conscience. But even if it were possible
to be certain of the non-existence of other beings (as objects of
moral activity), this would only affect the objective side of ethics,
leaving its own essential sphere altogether untouched. This
conclusion sufficiently safeguards the independence of moral
philosophy with regard to the first point raised by the critique
of knowledge. The second difficulty arises in connection with
the metaphysical question of the freedom of will.

IV

It is often maintained that the fate of moral consciousness
depends upon this or that view of the freedom of will. It is
urged that either our actions are free or they are determined, and
then it is affirmed that the second alternative, namely, deter
minism, or the theory that all our actions and states happen with
necessity, makes human morality impossible and thus deprives
moral philosophy of all meaning. If, they say, man is merely
a wheel in the world machine, it is impossible to speak of
moral conduct. But the whole force of the argument depends
upon an erroneous confusion between mechanical determinism
and determinism in general— a confusion from which Kant himself
is not altogether free. Determinism in general merely affirms
that everything that happens, and therefore all human conduct, is
determined (determinatur — hence the name of the theory) by sufficient

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 15

reasons^ apart from which it cannot take place, and given which it
happens with necessity. But although the general concept of
necessity is always identical with itself, necessity as actual fact
varies according to the sphere in which it is realised j and
corresponding to the three chief kinds of necessity (with reference
to events and actions) there may be distinguished three kinds of
determinism : (i) mechanical determinism^ which certainly is
exclusive of morality ; (2) .psychological determinism^ which allows
for some moral elements but is hardly compatible with others ;
(3) rationally ideal determinism^ which gives full scope to the
demands of morality.

Mechanical necessity is undoubtedly present in phenomena,
but the assertion that it is the only kind of necessity that exists
is simply a consequence of the materialistic metaphysics which
would reduce all that is to mechanical movements of matter.
This view, however, has nothing to do with the conviction that
everything that happens has a sufficient reason which determines it
with necessity. To regard man as a wheel in the world machine,
one must at least admit the existence of such a machine, and by
no means all determinists would agree to this. Many of them
regard the material world merely as a presentation in the mind of
spiritual beings, and hold that it is not the latter who are mechanic
ally determined by real things, but that phenomena are mentally
determined in accordance with the laws of the inner life of the
spiritual beings, of which man is one.

Leaving metaphysics for the present on one side and confining
ourselves to the limits of general experience, we undoubtedly find
already in the animal world inner psychological necessity essentially
irreducible to mechanism. Animals ' are determined in their
actions not merely externally, but also from within, not by
the push and pressure of things, but by impelling motives, i.e. by
their own ideas. Even granting that these motives are caused

1 In a certain sense of course the same may be said of plants and even of the different
parts of the inorganic world, for there does not exist in nature pure mechanism or
absolute soullessness j but in these preliminary remarks I wish to keep to what is
indisputable and generally understood. Concerning the different kinds of causality
or necessity in connection with the problem of the freedom of will see in particular
Schopenhauer, Grundprobl. des Ethik and Wille in der Natur. I have given the essence
of his views in my Kritika ct-vletchonnih natchal (Critique of Abstract Principles),
chap. ix.

16 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

by outer objects, they nevertheless arise and act in the animal's
mind in accordance with its own nature. This psychological
necessity is of course not freedom, but it cannot be identified with
mechanical necessity. Where Kant attempts to identify the two,
the erroneousness of his contention is betrayed by a curiously un
fortunate comparison he makes. In his words the freedom of
being determined by one's own ideas is in truth no better than
the freedom of a roasting-jack which being once set going pro
duces its movements by itself. Not only Kant, who was opposed to
any kind of hyloism (animation of matter), but the most poetically
minded Natur-philosoph would certainly not ascribe to such an
object as a roasting-jack the power of spontaneously producing its
movements. When we say that it turns by itself we simply
mean that, owing to the force of the impetus it has received, it
continues to move alone. The words "by itself" mean here " with
out the help of any new additional agent " — the same as the
French tout seul1 — and in no way presupposes that the "object
moved contributes anything of itself to the movement. But
when we say of an animal that it moves by itself, we/ mean
precisely its inward participation in producing movements. It
flees from an enemy or runs towards food, not because these
movements have been externally communicated to it beforehand,
but because at that moment it experiences fear of the enemy or
desire for food. Of course these psychological states are not free
acts of will, nor do they immediately produce bodily movements ;
they merely set going a certain mechanism which is already there,
fitted for the execution of certain actions. But the special
peculiarity which does not allow of anirhal life being reduced to
mere mechanism is that, for the normal interaction between the

1 In the Polish language the word sam has kept only this negative sense — alone without
the others (the derivative samotny= lonely) ; in the Russian and the German languages both
meanings are possible, and if the positive (the inner, spontaneous causality) is given the
negative (absence of any other cause) is presupposed, but not vice versa. Thus the
word samouchka (self-taught) denotes a man who has himself been the cause of his educa
tion and who studied alone without the help of others. The two meanings are here
combined as in similar words in other languages, e.g. the German Selbsterziehung or the
English self-help. But when we say that a roasting-jack moves (sam) by itself (Se/bst), the
word has merely the negative meaning that at the present moment nothing external is
pushing the object. But it is certainly not meant that the jack is the spontaneous
cause of its movements ; the cause is wholly contained in the previous impetus, external
to the object.

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 17

animal organism and the external environment to take place, the
latter must take for the animal the form of a motive and
determine the animal's movements in accordance with its own
pleasant or unpleasant feelings. The presence or absence of the
capacity for feeling which is inseparably connected with the two
other faculties of willing and of representing — i.e. the presence
or absence of an inner life — is the most important difference that
we can conceive. And if we grant the presence of this inner
life in the animal and deny it to a mechanical automaton, we
have no right to identify the two as Kant does.1

The psychical life as manifested in the different species and in
individual animals (and in man) presents qualitative differences
which enable us, for instance, to distinguish between the ferocious
and the meek, the brave and the cowardly, etc. Animals are not
aware of these qualities as either good or bad ; but in human
beings the same qualities are regarded as indicating a good or a
bad nature. There is a moral element involved here, and experi
ence unquestionably proves that good nature may develop and bad
be suppressed or corrected ; we already have here a certain object
for moral philosophy and a problem of its practical application,
though of course there is as yet no question as to the freedom of
will. The final independence of ethics of this metaphysical
problem is, however, to be discovered not within the sphere of
psychical life which is common to man and animal, but within
the sphere of human morality proper.

V

Just as in the animal world psychological necessity is super-
added to the mechanical without cancelling the latter or being
reduced to it, so in the human world to these two kinds of
necessity is added the ideally rational or moral necessity. It
implies that the motives or sufficient reasons of human actions are
not limited to concrete particular ideas which affect the will through

1 The logical right to doubt the presence of a mental life in animals must be based
upon the same grounds upon which I doubt the existence of minds other than my own
(see above). An exact solution of this purely theoretical problem is impossible in the
domain of ethics and is not necessary for it ; it is a question for epistemology and
metaphysics.

C

1 8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the pleasant or unpleasant sensations^ but may be supplied by
the universal rational idea of the good acting upon the conscious
will in the form of absolute duty or, in Kant's terminology,
in the form of a categorical imperative. To put it more plainly,
man may do good apart from and contrary to any self-interested
considerations, for the sake of the good itself, from reverence
for duty or the moral law. This is the culminating point of
morality, which is, however, quite compatible with determinism
and in no way requires the so-called freedom of will. Those who
affirm the contrary ought first to banish from the human mind
and language the very term " moral necessity," for it would be a
contradictio in adjecto if morality were possible only on condition
of free choice. And yet the idea expressed by this term is not only
clear to every one, but follows from the very nature of the case.
Necessity in general is the absolute dependence of an action
(in the broad sense, ejfectus] upon a ground which determines
it, and is therefore called sufficient. When this ground is a
physical blow or shock, the necessity is mechanical ; when a
mental excitation, the necessity is psychological ; and when the
idea of the good, it is moral. Just as there have been futile
attempts to reduce psychology to mechanics, so now an equally
futile attempt is made to reduce morality to psychology, i.e. to
show that the true motives of human action can only be mental
affections and not a sense of duty — in other words, to prove that
man never acts for conscience' sake alone. To prove this is, of
course, impossible. It is no argument to say that the moral idea
is comparatively seldom a sufficient ground for action. Plants
and animals are only an insignificant quantity as compared with
the inorganic mass of the earth ; but no one could conclude
from this that there is no fauna and flora on the earth. Moral
necessity is simply the finest flower on the psychological soil of
humanity, and for this reason it is all the more important for
philosophy.

Everything that is higher or more perfect presupposes by
its very existence certain freedom from the lower, or, to speak
more exactly, from the exclusive domination by the lower.
Thus the capacity of being determined to action by means of
i'deas or motives means freedom from the exclusive domination by
material impact and pressure — i.e. psychological necessity means

MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 19

freedom from mechanical necessity. In the same way moral
necessity, while wholly retaining its necessary character, means
freedom from the lower, psychological necessity. If a person's
actions' can be determined by the pure idea of the good or by the
absolute demands of moral duty, it means that he is free from
the overpowering influence of emotions and may successfully
resist the most powerful of them. But this rational freedom has

nothing in common with the so-called freedom of will which

...
means that the will is determined by nothing except itself,

or, according to the incomparable formula of Duns Scotus,
. " nothing except the will itself causes the act of willing in the
will " (nlhil aliud a voluntate causat actum volendi in voluntate).
I do not say that there is no such freedom of will ; I only say
that there is none of it in moral actions. In such actions will is
determined by the idea of the good or the moral law which is
universal and necessary, and independent of will both in its
content and in its origin. It may be thought, however, that
the act itself of accepting or not accepting the moral law as the
principle of one's will depends on that will alone, and that this
explains why one and the same idea of the good is taken by
some as a sufficient motive for action and is rejected by others.
The different effects are due, however, in the first place, to the
fact that one and the same idea has for different people a different
degree of clearness and completeness, and Secondly, to the unequal
receptivity of different natures to moral motives generally. But
then all causality and all necessity presupposes a special receptivity
of given objects to a certain kind of stimuli. The stroke of a
billiard cue which moves a billiard ball has no effect whatever on
a sun ray ; juicy grass which excites irrepressible longing in a
deer is not, as a rule, a motive of willing in a cat, and so on. If
the indifference of the sun ray to the strokes of a cue or the
dislike of vegetable food by a carnivorous animal be regarded as a
manifestation of free will, then, of course, man's good or bad
actions must also be considered arbitrary. But this is simply a
gratuitous introduction of misleading terminology.

For the idea of the good as duty to become a sufficient
reason or motive for action, a union of two factors is necessary :
'. ' sufficient clearness and fulness of the idea itself in consciousness '. • • •

and sufficient moral receptivity of the subject. Whatever t

— -

20 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

one-sided schools of ethics may say, it is clear that the presence
of one of these factors in the absence of the other is insufficient
for producing the moral effect. Thus, to use a Biblical
example, Abraham, who had the greatest moral receptivity but
an insufficient knowledge of what is contained in the idea of the
good, decided to kill his son. He was fully conscious of the
imperative form of the moral law as the expression of the higher
will, and accepted it implicitly ; he was simply lacking in the
conception of what may and what may not be a good or an
object of God's will — a clear proof that even saints stand in need
of moral philosophy. In the Bible Abraham's decision is
regarded in two ways — (i) as an act of religious devotion and
self-sacrifice, which brought to the patriarch and his posterity
the greatest blessings, and (2) as involving the idea that God's ^V-
will is qualitatively indifferent — an idea so erroneous and so
dangerous that interference from above was necessary in order
to prevent his intention being carried out. (I need not here
touch upon the connection of the event with heathen darkness nor
upon its mysterious relation to Christian light.) In contradistinc
tion to Abraham, the prophet Balaam, in spite of his being fully
conscious of the right course, was led by his vicious heart to
prefer the king's gifts to the decree of the Divine will and to
curse the people of God.

When the moral motive is defective in the one respect or
the other, it does not operate ; and when it is sufficient in both
respects it operates with necessity like any other cause. Suppose
I accept the moral law as a motive for action solely for its own
sake, out of reverence for it' and without any admixture of
extraneous motives. This very capacity to respect the moral
law so highly and so disinterestedly as to prefer it to all else is
itself a quality of mind and is not arbitrary, and the activity that
follows from it, though rationally free^ is entirely subject to moral
necessity and cannot possibly be arbitrary or accidental. It is free
in the relative sense, free from the lower mechanical and
psychological necessity, but it is certainly not free from the
inner higher necessity of the absolute good. Morality and moral
philosophy are entirely based upon rational freedom or moral
necessity, and wholly exclude from their sphere the irrational
unconditional freedom or the arbitrary choice.

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MORAL PHILOSOPHY AS A SCIENCE 21

In order that the conscious choice of man might be deter
mined by the idea of the good with full inward necessity and have a
sufficient motive, the content of this idea must be sufficiently
developed j the intellect must present the idea to the will in
its full force — and to do this is precisely the function of moral
philosophy. Thus ethics is not only compatible with deter
minism, but renders the highest form of necessity possible.
When a man of high moral development consciously subordinates
his will to the idea of the good, which is completely known to
him and has been fully thought out, it is clear that there is no
shadow of arbitrariness in his submission to the moral law, but
that it is absolutely necessary.

And yet there is such a thing as an absolute freedom of choice.

* i O

It is found not in the moral self-determination, not in the acts of
the practical reason where Kant sought it, but just at the opposite
pole of the inner life. At present I can only indicate my meaning
partially and imperfectly. As already said, the good cannot be the
direct object of arbitrary choice. Granted the requisite degree of
understanding and of receptivity on the part of the subject, its
own excellence is quite a sufficient reason for preferring it to the
opposite principle, and there is here no room for arbitrary choice.
When I choose the good, I do so not because of my whim but
because it is good, because it has value, and I am capable of
realising its significance. But what determines the opposite act
of rejecting the good and choosing the evil ? Is such choice
entirely due to the fact that, as a certain school of ethics supposes,
I do not know evil and mistakenly take it for the good ? It is
impossible to prove that this is always the case. A sufficient
knowledge of the good in combination with a sufficient re
ceptivity to it necessarily determines our will in the moral sense.
But the question still remains whether an insufficient receptivity
to the good and a receptivity to evil is merely a natural fact, or
whether it depends on the will, which in this case, having no
rational motive to determine it in the bad direction (for to
submit to evil rather than to good is contrary to reason), is
itself the ultimate cause of its own determination. For a rational
being there can be no objective reason for loving evil as such,
and the will therefore may only choose it arbitrarily — on the con
dition, of course, that there be full, clear consciousness of it ; for

22 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

when there is only half-consciousness, the bad choice is sufficiently
explained by a mistake of judgment. The good determines my
choice in its favour by all the infinite fulness of its positive
content and reality. This choice is therefore infinitely deter
mined ; it is absolutely necessary, and there is no arbitrariness in
it at all. In the choice of evil, on the contrary, there is no deter
mining reason, no kind of necessity, and therefore infinite
arbitrariness. The question then assumes the following form :
given a full and clear knowledge of the good, can a rational being
prove to be so unreceptive to it as to reject it utterly and
unconditionally and choose the evil ? Such lack of receptivity to
the good that is perfectly known would be something absolutely
irrational, and it is only an irrational act of this description that
would truly come under the definition of absolute freedom
or of arbitrary choice. We have no right a priori to deny its
possibility. Definite arguments for or against it may only be
found in the obscurest depths of metaphysics. But in any case,
before asking the question whether there can exist a being who,
with a full knowledge of the good, may yet arbitrarily reject it
and choose the evil, we must first make clear to ourselves all
that the idea of the good contains and involves. This is the
task of moral philosophy which is thus seen to be presupposed by
the metaphysical question as to the freedom of will (if this question
is to be treated seriously), and certainly not to depend upon it.1
Before going into any metaphysics we can and must learn what
our reason finds to be the good in human nature, and how it
develops and expands this natural good, raising it to the significance
of absolute moral perfection.

1 A considerable part of my theoretical philosophy will be devoted to the inquiry
into the problem of free will. So far, it is sufficient for me to show that this problem
has no immediate bearing upon moral philosophy which is concerned with the conception
of the good, whether the good be regarded as an object of arbitrary choice or as a
motive which necessarily determines the acts of rational and moral beings. In what
follows I shall always mean by human freedom, individual freedom, etc., either moral
freedom which is an ethical fact, or political freedom which is an ethical postulate,
without any more referring to the absolute freedom of choice which is merely a
metaph sical problem.

PART I
THE GOOD IN HUMAN NATURE

CHAPTER I

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY
I

HOWEVER convincing or authoritative a moral teaching may
be, it will remain fruitless and devoid of power unless it finds
a secure foundation in the moral nature of man. In spite of
all the differences in the degree of spiritual development in the
past and in the present, in spite of all the individual variations and
the general influences of race, climate, and historical conditions,
there exists an ultimate basis of universal human morality, and
upon it all that is of importance in ethics must rest. The
admission of this truth does not in any way depend upon our
metaphysical or scientific conception of the origin of man.
Whether the result of a long evolution of animal organisms or
an immediate product of a higher creative act, human nature,
with all its characteristic features — the most important among
them being the moral features — is in any case a fact.

The distinctive character of the psychical nature of man is
not denied by the great representative of the evolutionary theory.
" No doubt the difference in this respect (between man and other
animals) is enormous, even if we compare the mind of one of the \ *
lowest savages, who has no words to express any number higher
than four, and who uses hardly any abstract terms for common
objects or for the affections, with that of the most highly
organised ape. The difference would, no doubt, still remain
immense, even if one of the higher apes had been improved or
civilised as much as a dog has been in comparison with its parent-
form, the wolf or jackal. The Fuegians rank amongst the
lowest barbarians, but I was continually struck with surprise how

25

26 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

closely the three natives on board H.M.S. Beagle, who had lived
some years in England, and could talk a little English, resembled
us in disposition and in most of our mental faculties." l

Further on Darwin declares that he entirely agrees with the
writers who hold that the greatest difference between man and
animals consists in the moral sentiment,2 which he, for his part,
regards as innate and not as acquired.3 But carried away by his
desire — within certain limits a legitimate one — to fill up the
* immense' distance by intermediary links, Darwin makes one
fundamental error. He regards all human morality as in the
first instance social, thus connecting it with the social instincts
of animals. Personal or individual morality has, according to
Darwin, merely a derivative significance, and is a later result of
historical evolution. He maintains that the only virtues which
exist for savages are those that are required by the interests of
their social group.4 But one simple and universal fact is sufficient
to disprove this contention.

There exists one feeling which serves no social purpose, is
utterly absent in the highest animals, but is clearly manifested in
the lowest of the human races. In virtue of this feeling the most

D

savage and undeveloped man is ashamed of — i.e. recognises as
wrong — and conceals a physiological act which not only satisfies
his own desire and need, but is, moreover, useful and necessary for
the preservation of the species. Directly connected with this is
the reluctance to remain in primitive nakedness ; it induces
savages to invent clothes even when the climate and the simplicity
of life make them quite unnecessary.

This moral fact more sharply than any other distinguishes
man from all the other animals, for among them we find not the
slightest trace of anything approaching to it. Darwin himself,
discussing as he does the religious instinct of dogs, etc., never
attempts to look to animals for any rudiments of shame.
And indeed, not to speak of the lower creatures, even the highly-
endowed and well- trained domestic animals are no exception.
The noble steed afforded the prophet in the Bible a suitable
image for depicting the shamelessness of the dissolute young men
of the Jerusalem nobility ; the loyal dog has of old been rightly

1 Darwin, The Descent of Man (beginning of chap. iii.). 2 Ibid. chap. iii.

3 Ibid., the answer to Mill. 4 Ibid., on social virtues.

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 27

considered a typical example of utter shamelessness ; and among
the wild animals, the creature which in certain respects is still
more developed, the monkey, affords a particularly vivid instance
of unbridled cynicism, all the more apparent because of the
monkey's external likeness to man, and its extremely lively
intelligence and passionate temperament.

As it is utterly impossible to Discover shame among animals,
naturalists of a certain school are compelled to deny it to man.
Not having discovered any modest animals, Darwin talks of the
shamelessness of the savage peoples.1 From the man who went
round the world on his ship Beagle we might expect the
positive and definite evidence of an eye-witness ; but instead he
merely makes a few brief and unsupported remarks, convincing to
no one. Not only savages but even the civilised peoples of Biblical
or Homeric times may strike us as shameless, in the sense
that the feeling of shame which they undoubtedly possessed
did not always express itself in the same way, nor extend to
all the details of everyday life with which it is associated in our
case. So far as this goes, however, there is no need to appeal to
distant places and times : people who live side by side with us, but
belong to a different class, often consider permissible things of
which we are ashamed. And yet no one would contend that the
feeling of shame was unknown to them. Still less is it possible
to make any general deductions from cases of absolute moral
deficiency which are found in the annals of crime. Headless
monsters are sometimes born into the human world, but never
theless a head remains an essential feature of our organism.

To prove his contention that primitive man is devoid of
shame, Darwin also briefly refers to the religious customs of the
ancients, i.e. to the phallic cult. But this important fact is rather
an argument against him. Intentional, exaggerated shameless-
ness — shamelessness made into a religious principle — evidently
presupposes the existence of shame. In like manner the sacrifice

1 The Descent of Man. When dealing with savages even serious scientists sometimes
show remarkable thoughtlessness. The other day I saw an amusing instance of it in
the writings of the anthropologist Brocke. He affirms that the aborigines of the
Andaman Islands wear no clothes ; for, he says, one cannot regard as such a thin belt
with a piece of leather attached to it. I think one could with more ground deny the
essential function of clothes to the European dress-coat.

28 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

by the parents of their children to the gods certainly does not
prove the absence of pity or of parental loVe, but, on the contrary,
presupposes it. The main point about these sacrifices is that the
loved children were killed : if that which was sacrificed were not
dear to the person who gave it, the sacrifice would be of no value
and would lose its character of sacrifice. (It is only later, as
the religious feeling became weaker, that this fundamental con
dition of all sacrifice came to be avoided by means of different
symbolical substitutes.} No religion at all, not even the most
savage one, could be based upon a mere absence of shame, any
more than upon a mere absence of pity. False religion as much as
the true presupposes the moral nature of man, and does so in the
very demand for its perversion. The demoniac powers, wor
shipped in the bloody and dissolute cults of ancient heathendom,
were nurtured and lived by this real perversion, by this positive
immorality. These religions did not require merely the natural
performance of a certain physiological act. No, their essence
was the intensification of depravity, the overstepping of all bounds
imposed by nature, society, and conscience. The religious char
acter of the orgies proves the extreme importance of this circum
stance. If they involved nothing beyond natural shamelessness,
what could be the source of the strained, the perverted, the
mystical element in them ?

It is obvious that it would not be necessary for Darwin to use
such unconvincing indirect arguments in support of his view
could he produce any trustworthy facts to show the presence of
even rudimentary modesty among animals. But there are no such
facts, and shame undoubtedly remains, even from the external and
empirical point of view, the distinguishing characteristic of man.

II

The feeling of shame (in its fundamental sense) is a fact
which absolutely distinguishes man from all lower nature. No
other animal has this feeling in the least degree, while in man it
has been manifested from time immemorial and is subject to
growth and development.

But that which is involved in this fact gives it a further and
a far deeper significance. The feeling of shame is not merely a

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 29

distinctive feature whereby man is separated off for external
observation from the rest of the animal world ; in it man
actually separates himself from material nature, his own as well as
that external to him. In being ashamed of his own natural
inclinations and organic functions, man proves that he is not
merely a material being, but is something other and higher.
That which is ashamed separates itself in the very mental act
of shame from that of which it is ashamed. But material nature
cannot be foreign to or external to itself. Hence if I am
ashamed of my material nature, I prove by that very fact that
I am not identical with it. And it is precisely at the moment
when man falls under the sway of the material nature and
is overwhelmed by it that his distinctive peculiarity and inner
independence assert themselves in the feeling of shame, in and
through which he regards the material' life as something other,
as something foreign to himself, which must not dominate
him.

Even if individual cases of sexual shame were to be found
among animals, it would simply be a premonition of the human
nature. For in any case it is clear that a being who is ashamed
of his animality in that very fact proves himself to be more than a
mere animal. No one who believes the story of the speaking ass
of Balaam ever denied, on that ground, that the gift of rational
speech is a characteristic peculiarity of man as distinct from other
animals. But still more fundamental in this sense is the meaning
of sexual shame.

This fundamental fact of history and of anthropology — un
noticed or intentionally omitted in the book of the great modern
scientist — had been noted three thousand years before in an
inspired passage in a book of far more authority : " And the
eyes of them both were opened (at the moment of fall) and they
knew that they were naked ; and they sewed fig leaves together,
and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the
Lord God . . . and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the
presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And
the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art
thou ? And he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was
afraid, because I was naked ; and I hid myself. And He said,
Who told thee that thou wast naked ? "

30 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

At the moment of fall a higher voice speaks in the depth of
the human soul, asking : Where art thou ? where is thy moral
dignity ? Man, lord of nature and the image of God, dost thou
still exist ? And the answer is at once given : I heard the
Divine voice and I was afraid of laying bare my lower nature. I am
ashamed^ therefore I exist ; and not physically only, but morally
— I am ashamed of my animality, therefore I still exist as man.

It is by his own action and by testing his own being that
man attains to moral self-consciousness. Materialistic science
would attempt in vain to give, from its point of view, a satis
factory answer to the question asked of man long ago : " Who
told thee that thou wast naked ? "

The independent and ultimate meaning of the sense of
shame would be explained away if this moral fact could be
connected with some material gain for the individual or for the
species in the struggle for existence. In that case shame could be
accounted for as a form of the instinct of animal self-preservation
— individual or social. But there is no such connection.

The feeling of shame associated with the sexual act might
be useful to the individual and to the species as a preventive
against the abuse of this important organic function. In the
case of animals which follow their instincts we do not find any
injurious excesses ; but in the case of man, owing to a superior
development of the individual consciousness and will, excesses
become possible ; and against the most dangerous of them — the
abuse of the sexual instinct — a useful check is provided in the
feeling of shame which develops under the general conditions of
natural selection. This is a plausible argument, but it is not
really valid. To begin with, it involves an inner contradiction.
If the strongest and the most fundamental of instincts — the instinct
of self-preservation — is powerless to prevent man from dangerous

excesses, how could this be done by a new and derivative instinct

. .

of shame ? And if the instinctive promptings of shame do

not have sufficient influence over man, which is really the case,
no specific utility can attach to shame, and it remains inexplicable
./^ from the utilitarian and materialistic point of view. Instead of
checking the excesses, which are a violation of the normal order,
it itself simply proves to be an additional object of such a
violation — i.e. an utterly useless complication. Connected with

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 31

this is another consideration which contradicts the utilitarian
view of shame, — the fact, namely, that this feeling manifests itself
most clearly before entering upon sexual relations : shame speaks
most clearly and emphatically virginibus puerisque^ so that if shame
had a direct practical significance, so far from being useful, it
would be detrimental both to the individual and to the species.
But if shame has no practical effect even when it is felt most,
no subsequent effect can be expected from it. So long as shame
is felt there can as yet be no question of sexual abuse ; and when
there is abuse, it is too late to speak of shame. The normal
person is sufficiently safeguarded from dangerous excesses by
the simple feeling of satisfied desire, and an abnormal person or
one with perverted instincts is least of all noted for his sense of
shame. Thus, speaking generally, where shame might, from
the utilitarian point of view, be useful, it is absent, and where it
is present it is of no use at all.

In truth the feeling of shame is excited not by the abuse of
a certain organic function, but by the simple exercise of that
function : the natural fact is itself experienced as shameful.
If this is a manifestation of the instinct of self-preservation, it is
so in quite a special sense. What is b'eing safeguarded here is
not the subject's material welfare, but his highest human dignity ;
or rather that dignity evinces itself as still safe in the depths of
our being. The strongest manifestation of the material organic
life calls forth a reaction on the part of the spiritual principle
which reminds the personal consciousness that man is not merely
a natural fact, that he must not as a passive instrument serve
the vital purposes of nature. This is only a reminder^ and it
rests with the personal rational will to take advantage of it. As
I have already said, this moral feeling has no direct real effect,
and if its promptings are in vain, shame itself gradually disappears
and is at last completely lost.

It is clear, then, that even if it were true that individual persons
or entire tribes are devoid of shame, this fact would not have
the significance ascribed to it. The unquestionable shamelessness
of individual persons as well as the questionable shamelessness
of entire peoples, can only mean that in these particular cases
the spiritual principle in man which lifts him above material
nature is either still undeveloped or is already lost — that this

32 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

particular man or this particular group of men have either not
yet risen above the bestial stage or have once more returned to
it. But the hereditary or acquired animality of this or that
person or persons cannot destroy or weaken the significance of
the moral dignity of man, which with the enormous majority of
people clearly asserts itself in the feeling of shame — a feeling
absolutely unknown to any animal. The fact that infants at
the breast, or the mute, are, like animals, unable to speak, does
not in any way diminish the significance of language as the
expression of a distinctive, purely human rationality, not found
in other animals.

in

Apart from all empirical considerations as to the genesis of
the feeling of shame in humanity, the significance of that
feeling lies in the fact that it determines man's ethical relation
to his material nature. Man is ashamed of being dominated or
ruled by it (especially in its chief manifestation), and thereby
asserts his inner independence and his superior dignity in
relation to it, in virtue of which he must possess and not be
possessed by it.

Side by side with this fundamental moral feeling determining
the right attitude to the lower, material principle in each of us,
there exists in human nature another feeling_which serves as a
basis for a moral relation to other human, or, speaking generally,
to other living beings that are like us — namely, the feeling of pity.1
The essence of it lies in the fact' that a given subject is conscious
in a corresponding manner of the suffering or the want of
others, i.e. responds to it more or less painfully, thus more
or less exhibiting his solidarity with the others. The ultimate
and innate character of this moral feeling is not denied by any
serious thinker or scientist, if only because the feeling of pity
or compassion — in contradistinction to that of shame — is present,
in its rudimentary stage, in many animals,2 and consequently from

1 I use the simplest term, the most usual in technical works on the subject being
the terms sympathy or compassion.

2 A number of facts showing this are to be found in works of descriptive zoology
(particularly in Brehm's Life of Animals), and also in the literature on animal
psychology that has of late been considerably developed.

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 33

no point of view can be regarded as a later product of human
development. Thus if a shameless man reverts to the brute
stage, a pitiless man falls lower than the animal level.

The close connection of the feeling of pity with the social
instincts of men and animals cannot be doubted owing to the very
nature of that feeling. In its essence, however, it is an individual
moral state, and even in the case of animals it is not reducible to
social relations, much less so in the case of man. If the need for
a social unit were the only foundation of pity, that feeling could
only be experienced towards the creatures that belong to one and
the same social whole. This is generally but by no means
always the case, at any rate not among the higher animals.
Numerous facts of the tenderest love1 between animals (both
wild and domestic) belonging to different and sometimes remote
zoological groups are well known. It is very strange that in the
face of this fact Darwin should maintain — without adducing any
evidence to prove his contention — that among savage peoples
sympathetic feelings are limited to members of one and the
same narrow group. Of course among the cultured nations,
too, most people show real sympathy chiefly towards their
own family and most intimate friends, but the individual
moral feeling in all races may transcend — and did do so
of old — not only these narrow limits, but all empirical limits
altogether. To accept Darwin's contention unconditionally
would be to admit that a human savage cannot attain to
the moral level sometimes reached by dogs, monkeys, and even
lions.2

The sympathetic feeling can grow and develop indefinitely,
but its ultimate essence is one and the same among all living
beings. The first stage and the fundamental form of all
solidarity in the animal kingdom and in the human world is

1 Love in the purely psychological sense (apart from the materially sexual and the
aesthetic relation) is firmly established, permanent pity or compassion (sympathy).
Long before Schopenhauer the Russian people identified these two things in their
language : " to love " and " to pity " is one and the same for them. One need not go
so far, but it cannot be disputed that the fundamental subjective manifestation of love
as a moral feeling is pity.

2 It is obvious, of course, that such cases with regard to wild animals can only be
properly observed when the animals are in captivity. It is very probable indeed that
the sympathetic feelings in question are awakened chiefly in captivity.

D

34 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

parental (and in particular maternal) love. This is the simple
root from which springs all the complexity and multiplicity of
the internal and external social relations ; and it is here that
we see most clearly that the individually-psychological essence of
the moral bond is no other than pity. For no other mental
state can express the original solidarity of the mother with her
weak, helpless, piteous offspring wholly dependent upon her.

IV

The feelings of shame and of pity essentially determine our
moral attitude in the first place to our own material nature, and
in the second to all other living beings. In so far as a man is
modest and pitiful he stands in a moral relation c to himself and to
his neighbour ' (to use the old terminology) ; shamelessness and
pitilessness, on the contrary, undermine the very roots of his
character. Apart from these two feelings there exists in us a
third one, irreducible to the first two, and as ultimate as they ; it
determines man's moral attitude not to his own lower nature
and not to the world of beings similar to him, but to something
different recognised by him as the higher ; as that which he can
be neither ashamed of, nor feel pity for, but which he must revere.
This feeling of reverence (reverentia\ or of awe (piety, pietas\
before the higher forms in man the moral basis of religion, and of
the religious order of life. When abstracted by philosophical
reflection from its historic. manifestations, it constitutes the so-
called c natural religion.' The ultimate and the innate character
of this feeling cannot be denied for the same reason that the"
innateness of pity is not seriously denied by any one. In a
rudimentary form both the feeling of pity and of reverence are
found among animals. It is absurd to expect to find among
them religion in our sense of the term. But the general element
ary feeling upon which human religion is ultimately based —
namely, the feeling of reverence and awe in the presence of some
thing higher — may unconsciously spring up in creatures other
than ma,ix- In this sense the following remarks must be said to
be true :[ " The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex
one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and
mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence,

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 35

gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements. No
being could experience so complex an emotion until advanced in
his intellectual and moral faculties to at least a moderately high
level. Nevertheless, we see some distant approach to this state
of mind in the deep love of a dog for his master, associated with
complete submission, some fear, and perhaps other feelings. The
behaviour of a dog when returning to his master after an absence,
and, as I may add, of a monkey to his beloved keeper, is widely
different from that towards their fellows. In the latter case the
transports of joy appear to be somewhat less, and the sense of
equality is shown in every action." l The representative of the
scientific evolutionary view admits then that in the quasi-religious
relation of the dog or of the monkey to a higher being (from
their point of view) there is, in addition to fear and self-interest,
a moral element and one quite distinct from the sympathetic
.feelings which these animals exhibit in relation to their equals.
This specific relation to the higher is precisely what I call
reverence ; and if one admits it in dogs and monkeys it would be
strange to deny it to man, and to deduce human religion from
fear and self-interest alone. These lower feelings undoubtedly
contribute to the formation and the development of religion.
But the ultimate basis of it is the distinctive religiously moral
feeling of man's reverent love to what is more excellent than
himself.

V

The fundamental feelings of shame^ pity^ and reverence exhaust
the sphere of man's possible moral relations to that which is below
him, that which is on a level with him, and that which is above
him. Mastery over the material senses, solidarity with other
living beings, and inward voluntary submission to the superhuman
principle — these are the eternal and permanent foundations of
the moral life of humanity. The degree of mastery, the depth
and the extent of solidarity, the completeness of the inward
submission vary in the course of history, passing from a lesser to

1 Darwin, op. cit., end of ch. iii. Darwin had been speaking before of the intellectual
side of religion — of the acknowledgment of an invisible cause or causes for unusual
events. He finds this too among the animals.

36 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

a greater perfection, but the principle in each of the three spheres
of relation remains one and the same.

All other phenomena of the moral life, all the so-called virtues,
may be shown to be the variations of these three essentials or the
results of interaction between them and the intellectual side of
man. Courage and fortitude, for instance, are undoubtedly exempli
fications — though in a more external and superficial form — of the
same principle, the more profound and significant expression of
which is found in shame, — the principle, namely, of rising above
and dominating the lower material nature. Shame (iiyits typical
manifestation) elevates man above the animal instinct of generic self-
preservation ; courage elevates him above another anintal instinct
— that of personal self-preservation. But apart from this dis
tinction in the object or the sphere of application, these two
forms of one and the same moral principle differ more profoundly
in another respect. The feeling of shame necessarily involves a
condemnation of that with which it is associated : that of which I
am ashamed is declared by me, in and through the very act of being
ashamed, to be bad or wrong. But a courageous feeling or action,
on the contrary, may simply express the nature of a given individual,
and, as such, contains no condemnation of its opposite. For this
reason courage is found among animals, having in their case no
moral significance. As the function of obtaining and assimilat
ing food gets more complex and developed it becomes in some
animals the destructive predatory instinct which may sometimes
outweigh the instinct of self-preservation. This domination of one
instinct over another is precisely -what is meant by animal courage.
Its presence or absence is simply a natural fact, not inwardly
connected with any self-valuation. No one would think of
saying that hares or hens are ashamed of their timidity ; courage
ous animals when they happen to be afraid are not ashamed
of it either — nor do they boast of their courage. In man, too,
the quality of courage as such is essentially of that character. But
owing to our higher nature and to the intervention of the in
tellectual elements this quality acquires a new meaning which
connects it with the root of the distinctly human morality — with
shame. Man is conscious of courage not merely as of the pre
dominance of the predatory instinct, but as the power of the spirit
to rise above the instinct of personal self-preservation. The

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 37

presence of this spiritual power is recognised as a virtue, and the
absence of it is condemned as shameful. Thus the essential kin
ship between shame and courage is seen in the fact that the
absence of the second virtue is condemned in accordance with the
standard set by the first : a lack of courage becomes the subject
for shame. This does not apply with the same force to other
virtues (charity, justice, humility, piety, etc.) ; their absence is <
generally condemned in a different way. And, when judging
other people's feelings and actions, malice, injustice, haughtiness,
impiety strike us rather as hateful and revolting than as shameful ;
the latter definition is specially restricted to cowardice and
voluptuousness,1 i.e. to such vices which violate the dignity of
the human personality as such, and not its duties to others or
to God.

The inner dependence of other human virtues upon the three
ultimate foundations of morality will be shown in due course.

VI

Of the three ultimate foundations of the moral life, one, as we
have seen, belongs exclusively to man (shame), another (pity) is to
a large extent found among animals, and the third (awe or
reverence for the higher) is in a small degree observed in some
animals. But although the rudiments of moral feeling (of the
second and third kind) are found in the animal world, they differ
essentially from the corresponding feelings in man. Animals
may be good or bad, but the distinction between good and evil as
such does not exist for their consciousness. In the case of man
this knowledge of good and evil is given immediately in the feel
ing of shame that is distinctive of him, and, gradually developing
from this first root and refining its concrete and sensuous form,
it embraces the whole of human conduct in the form of con
science. We have seen that within the domain of man's moral
relation to himself or to his own nature, the feeling of shame (which
has at first a distinctly sexual character) remains identical in
form whether it is opposed to the instinct of generic or of indi-

1 A complex wrong-doing like treason is recognised both as revolting and as shame
ful for the same reason, in so far as treason includes cowardice which prefers secret
treachery to open enmity.

38 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

vidual self-preservation : a cowardly attachment to the mortal
life is as shameful as giving oneself up to the sexual desire. When
from the relation to oneself as a separate individual and a member
of a genus we pass to the relations to other people and to God —
relations infinitely more complex, varied, and changeable, — the
moral self- valuation can no longer remain a simple concrete
sensation. It inevitably passes through the medium of abstract
thought and assumes the new form of conscience. But the two
facts are no doubt essentially the same.1 Shame and conscience
use different language and on different occasions, but the mean
ing of their deliverances is one and the same : this is not good^ this
is wrong^ this is unworthy.

This is the meaning of shame ; conscience adds to it the
analytic explanation, " if you do this wrong or unlawful thing,
you will be guilty of evil, sin, crime."

The voice of conscience, in determining as good or as evil our
relations to our neighbours and to God, alone gives them a moral
significance which otherwise they would not possess. And as
conscience is simply a development of shame, the whole moral life
of man in all its three aspects springs, so to speak, from one root —
a root that is distinctly human and essentially foreign to the
animal world.

If the ultimate foundation of conscience is the feeling of
shame, it is clear that animals which are devoid of this more
elementary feeling cannot possess the more complex development
of it — conscience. The presence of conscience in them is some
times deduced from the fact that animals which have done
something wrong look guilty. But this conclusion is based on a
misunderstanding — on a confusion, namely, between two facts
which, as we know from our own experience, are essentially distinct.
The moral state of being reproached by conscience, or the state of
repentance, has an analogy in the intellectual sphere in the con
sciousness of mistake or miscalculation, i.e. of an act which from
the utilitarian or the practical point of view is purposeless or
unprofitable and is followed by a feeling of dissatisfaction with

1 The expressions ntnie stydno (' I am ashamed ') and mnie so-viestno (' I am conscience-
stricken ') are used in the Russian language as synonymous, and, indeed, from the nature
of the case it is impossible to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the two mental
states.

THE PRIMARY DATA OF MORALITY 39

oneself. These two facts are similar in form, and both express
themselves externally as confusion (physiologically as the flushing of
the face). But although they sometimes coincide, their nature is
so different that often they exist separately and even directly
exclude one another. Thus, for instance, when the town-captain
in Gogol's Inspector General is terribly indignant with himself for
having been deceived by Hlestakov and not having deceived the
latter instead, or when a card-sharper in sudden confusion curses
himself for not having been clever enough at cheating, such self-
condemnation obviously has nothing to do with the awakening
of conscience, but rather proves an inveterate absence of con
science. Intellectual self-condemnation is undoubtedly present
in the higher animals. When a well-brought-up dog is so keenly
conscious of its own misdemeanours that it actually tries to con
ceal them, this certainly proves its intelligence, but has no relation
whatever to its conscience.

VII

The highest moral doctrine can be no other than a complete
and correct development of the ultimate data of human morality,
for the universal demands involved in them cover the whole sphere
of possible human relations. But it is precisely the universality
of these relations that forbids us to stop at establishing their
existence as simply given in our nature and renders a further
development and justification of them necessary.

The primitive, natural morality we have been considering is
no other than the reaction of the spiritual nature against the
lower forces — fleshly lust, egoism, and wild passions — which
threaten to submerge and overpower it. The capacity for such a
reaction makes man a moral being ; but if the actual force and the
extent of the reaction is to remain indefinite, it cannot, as such, be
the foundation of the moral order in the human world. All the
actual manifestations of our moral nature are merely particular and
accidental in character. Man may be more or less modest, com
passionate, religious : the universal norm is not given as a fact.
The voice of conscience itself speaks more or less clearly and
insistently, and can (in so far as it is a fact] be binding only to
the extent to which it is heard in each given case.

40 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

But reason, which is as innate in man as the moral feelings,
from the first puts to his moral nature its demand for universality
and necessity. Rational consciousness cannot rest content with
the accidental existence of relatively good feelings from which no
general rule can be deduced. The primary distinction between
good and evil already implies an idea of the good free from any
limitations, containing in itself an absolute norm of life and activity.
In the form of a postulate the idea of the good is inherent in
human reason, but its actual content is determined and developed
only through the complex work of thought.

From the ultimate data of morality we inevitably pass to the
general principles which reason deduces from them, and which have
in turn played the foremost part in the different ethical theories.

CHAPTER II

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY
I

THE fundamental moral feeling of shame psychologically con
tains man's negative relation to the animal nature which seeks to
overpower him. To the strongest and most vivid manifestation
of that nature the human spirit, even at a low stage of development,
opposes the consciousness of its own dignity : I am ashamed to
submit to the desire of the flesh, I am ashamed to be like an animal,
the lower side of my nature must not dominate me — such domina
tion is shameful and evil. This self-assertion of the moral dignity
— half-conscious and unstable in the simple feeling of shame — is
worked up by reason into the principle of asceticism.

The object of condemnation in asceticism is not material nature
as such. From no point of view can it be rationally maintained
that nature considered objectively — whether in its essence or in
its appearances — is evil. It is usually supposed that the so-called
Oriental religions, which are noted for extreme asceticism, are
specially characterised by their identification of the principle of
evil with physical matter, in contradistinction to true Christianity,
which finds the source of evil in the moral sphere. But, strictly
speaking, such identification is not to be found in any system of
Oriental philosophy or religion. It is sufficient to mention the
three most typical systems of India, the classical country of
asceticism — the orthodox Brahmin Vedanta,1 the independent
Sankhya, and, finally, Buddhism.

1 It assumed its present form only about the time when Buddhism disappeared from
India (VIII. and XIII. c.a.d.), but the fundamental conceptions involved in it are to be
found as early as the ancient Upanishads.

41

42 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

According to the Vedanta, evil is illusion of the mind, which
takes material objects for entities separate from one another and
from the self, and takes the self to be an entity separate from the
one absolute Being. The cause of this illusion is the one ultimate
Spirit itself (Paramatman) which suddenly, in a moment of incom
prehensible blindness or ignorance (Avidya), conceived the possibility
of something other than itself, desired that other, and thus fell into
an illusory duality, from which sprang the world. This world
does not exist on its own account (as external to the One) but is
erroneously taken so to exist — and therein lies the deception and
the evil. When a traveller in the wood takes the chopped-ofF
branch of a tree for a snake, or, vice versa^ a snake for a branch of
a tree, neither the image of the snake nor of the branch is in itself
evil : what is evil is the one being taken for the other, and both
being taken for something external to the self. The ignorant
think that their evil works are distinct from the one Reality.
But the evil deed, the evil doer himself, and the false thought about
their separateness are all part of the one absolute and ultimate
Spirit in so far as it partly l is in the state of ignorance. Its
self-identity is re-established in the thought of the wise ascetics
who by mortifying the flesh have conquered in themselves the
illusion of separateness and learnt that all is one. According to
such a system of thought evil clearly cannot belong to material
nature, for that nature is regarded as non-existent. Its reality is
acknowledged in another important Indian system — in the in
dependent or atheistic Sankhya. In it the pure spirit (Purusha),
existing only in the multitude of separate entities, is opposed to
first matter or nature (Prakriti). But the latter is not as such
the principle of wrong or of evil : evil (and that only in the
relative sense) is in the abiding connection of the spirit with it.
These two elements must be connected, but only in^a transient
fashion : nature must be the temporal means, and not the purpose,
of the spirit. The paralysed man who can see (the spirit) must
make use of the blind athlete (nature), on whose shoulders he can
attain the end of his journey ; but once the end is reached, they
must part. The end of the spirit is self-knowledge — that is,

1 Some Hindu books determine the 'part' of ignorance arithmetically as forming
one-fourth (or, according to others, one-third) of the Absolute. Probably in order that
the relation may remain unaltered the birth of the ignorant is equalised by the en
lightenment of the wise.

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 43

knowledge of itself as distinct from nature. But if the spirit is to
learn that it is distinct from nature, it must first know nature —
and this is the only justification of the connection between the
two. Nature is the dancer, spirit the spectator. She has shown
herself, he has seen her, and they may part. The ascetic who
resists natural inclinations is simply the wise man who refrains
from using means which are no longer necessary once the end
has been reached. Orthodox Brahmanism affirms that only the
One exists, and that there is no other (the principle of Advaiti —
of unity or indivisibility). The Sankhya philosophy admits the
existence of c the other ' — i.e. of nature — but maintains that it is
foreign to the spirit, and, once a knowledge of it has been attained,
unnecessary. Buddhism reconciles this duality in a general in
difference : spirit and nature, the One and its other are equally
illusory. £ All is empty ' j there is no object for will ; the desire
to merge one's spirit in the absolute is as senseless as the desire
for physical enjoyment. Asceticism is here reduced to a mere
state of not willing.

Turning from the Hindu systems to a different type of
philosophy developed in Egypt, we find that the striking and
original form it finally received in the gnosticism of Valentine's
school, involved a conception of the natural world as mixed and
heterogeneous in character. The world is, in the first place, the
creation of the evil principle (Satan), secondly, the creation of the
neutral and unconscious Demiurgus who is neither good nor evil,
and thirdly, it contains manifestations of the heavenly Wisdom
fallen from higher spheres. Thus, the visible light of our world
was taken by the thinkers in question to be the smile of Sophia \ *
remembering the celestial radiance of the Pleroma (the absolute
fulness of being) she had forsaken. Materiality as such was not,
then, regarded by the Gnostics as evil ; light is material and yet it
is a manifestation of the good principle. Matter is not created by
Satan because it is in itself evil, but, on the contrary, it is evil only
in so far as it is created by Satan, i.e. in so far as it manifests or
externally expresses the inward nature of evil — in so far as it is
darkness, disorder, destruction, death — or, in a word, chaos.

The Persian system of thought (Manicheism), which is more
pronouncedly dualistic, no more identifies material nature with evil
than does the Egyptian gnosis. The natural world contains the

44 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

element of light, which proceeds from the divine kingdom of the
good ; this element is manifested in the phenomena of light and
is also present in vegetable and animal life. The highest godhead is
imagined by the Manicheans in no other form than that of light.
None of these £ Oriental ' systems, then, are guilty of the
meaningless identification of evil with material nature as such.
But the contention that there is evil in the material nature of the
world and of man would be granted by all the earnest thinkers both
of the East and the West. This truth does not depend upon any
metaphysical conception of matter and nature. We ourselves
share in material nature and can know from our own inner
experience in what respect nature can, and in what respect it
cannot, satisfy the demands of the spirit.

II

In spite of Plotinus's well-known assertion to the contrary,
the normal man of the highest degree of spiritual development is
not in the least ashamed of being a corporeal or material entity.
No one is ashamed of having an extended body of a definite shape,
colour, and weight ; that is, we are not ashamed of all that we
have in common with a stone, a tree, a piece of metal. It is only
in relation to characteristics we have in common with beings
which approach us most nearly and belong to the kingdom of
nature contiguous to us, that we have the feeling of shame and of
inner opposition. And this feeling shows that it is when we are
essentially in contact with the material life of the world and may
be actually submerged by it, that we must wrench ourselves away
from and rise above it. The feeling of shame is excited neither
by that part of our corporeal being which has no direct relation
to the spirit at all (such as the above-mentioned material qualities
which the spirit has in common with inanimate objects), nor by
that part of the living organism which serves as the chief expression
of the specifically human rational life — the head, the face, the
hands, etc. The object of shame is only that part of our material
being which, though immediately related to the spirit, since it can
inwardly affect it, is not an expression or an instrument of the
spiritual life, but is, on the contrary, a means whereby the pro
cesses of purely animal life seek to drag the human spirit dt>wn

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 45

into their sphere, to master and overpower it. The reaction of
the spiritual principle, which finds an immediate expression in the
feeling of shame, is evoked by material life thus encroaching upon
the rational being of man and seeking to make him into a passive
instrument of or a useless appendage to the physical process. The
rational affirmation of a certain moral norm assumes psychologically
the form of fear to violate it or of sorrow at having violated it
already. The norm logically presupposed by the feeling of shame,
is, when expressed in its most general form, as follows : the animal
life in man must be subordinate to the spiritual. This judgment is
apodictically certain, for it is a correct deduction from fact and is
based on the logical law of identity. The very fact of man's
shame at being merely animal proves that he is not a mere animal,
but is also something else and something higher ; for if he were
on the same or on a lower level, shame would be meaningless.
Looking at the matter from the formal side alone it cannot be
doubted that clear consciousness is better than blind instinct, that
spiritual self-control is better than the surrender to the physical
process. And if man unites in himself two different elements
related as the higher and the lower, the demand for the subordina
tion of the latter to the former follows from the very nature of the
case. The fact of shame is independent of individual, racial, and
other peculiarities; the demand contained in it is of a universal'-
character; and this, in conjunction with the logical necessity of
that demand, makes it in the full sense of the term a moral principle.-.

III

Man, like the animals, participates in the life of the universe.
The essential difference between the two lies simply in the manner
of the participation. The animal, being endowed with conscious
ness, shares inwardly and psychically in the processes of nature
which hold it under their sway. It knows which of them are
pleasant or unpleasant, it instinctively feels what is detrimental to
itself or to the species. But this is true only with reference to
the environment which immediately affects the animal at a given
time. The world process as a whole does not exist for the animal
soul. It can know nothing of the reasons and ends of that process,
and its participation in it is purely passive or instrumental. Man,

46 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

on the other hand, passes judgment on the part he takes in the
world process, both with reference to the given events that affect
him as psychological motives^ and to the general principle of all
activity. That principle is the idea of worth or of lack of worth,
of good or of evil, and it can itself become the ground or the
motive of human activity. This higher consciousness or inward
self-valuation places man in a definite relation to the world process
as a whole, the relation, namely, of actively participating in its
purpose ; for in determining all his actions by the idea of the good,
man shares in the universal life only In so far as its purpose is the
good. But since this higher consciousness as a fact grows out of
the material nature and exists, so to speak, at its expense, that lower
nature or the animal soul in man is naturally opposed to it. There
thus arise two conflicting tendencies in our life — the spiritual and
the carnal.1 The spiritual principle, as it immediately appears to
our present consciousness, is a distinct tendency or process in our
life, directed towards realising in the whole of our being the
rational idea of the good. Likewise the carnal principle with
which in our inner experience we are concerned, is not the
physical organism nor even the animal soul as such, but merely a
tendency excited in that soul, and opposed to the higher conscious
ness, seeking to overpower and to drown in the material process
the beginnings of spiritual life.

In this case material nature is indeed evil, for it tries to destroy
that which is worthy of being and which contains the possibility
of something different from and better than the material life.
Not in itself, but only in this bad relation to the spirit, man's
material nature is what in scriptural terminology is called the Jlesh.

The idea of ' flesh ' must not be confused with the idea of c body.'
Even from the ascetic point of view body is the temple of the
spirit ; bodies may be 'spiritual,' c glorified,' ' heavenly,' but ( flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.' 2 Flesh is
excited animality, animality that breaks loose from its bounds and

1 This is a fact of our inner experience, and neither its psychological reality nor its
ethical significance depend upon the metaphysical or any other view which may be
taken of the essence of spirit and matter.

2 Sometimes in the Scriptures the word ' flesh ' is used in the wide sense of material
being in general : e.g. * The word became flesh,' i*. became a physical event, which did
not prevent the incarnate Word from being a purely spiritual and sinless God-man. But
usually the terms flesh and fleshly are used in the Scriptures in the bad sense of material

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 47

ceases to be the matter or the hidden (potential) foundation of the
spiritual life — as the animal life ought to be both on its physical
and on its mental side.

At the elementary stages of his development man is a
spiritual being potentially rather than actually ; and it is just
this potentiality of a higher spiritual life, manifested as self-
consciousness and self-control in opposition to blind and un
controlled physical nature, that is endangered by fleshly lust.
Flesh, i.e. matter which has ceased to be passive and is striving
for independence and infinity, seeks to attract the spiritual power
to itself, to drag it in and absorb it in itself, increasing its own
power at its expense. This is possible because, as incarnate, as
actually manifested in the concrete man, spirit, or rather the
life of spirit, is only a transformation of material existence
(more immediately, of the animal soul), although in their ideal
essence spirit and matter are heterogeneous. Regarded con
cretely, spiritual and material being are two kinds of energy
which can be transformed into one another — just as mechanical
motion can be transformed into heat and vice versa. The
flesh (i.e. the animal soul as such) is strong only in the weakness
of the spirit and lives only by its death. Therefore, for the
spirit to preserve itself and to increase in power, the flesh must
be subdued and transferred from the actual to the potential
state. This is the real meaning of the moral law that flesh
must be subordinate to the spirit, and the true basis of all moral
asceticism.

IV

The moral demand to subordinate the flesh to the spirit
conflicts with the actual striving of the flesh to subject the
spirit to itself. Consequently the ascetic principle has a double
aspect. It requires in the first place that the spiritual life should
be safeguarded from the encroachments of the flesh, arfd secondly,
that the animal life should be made merely the potentiality or
the matter of the spirit. Owing to the intimate inner con-
nature which violates its due relation to the spirit, is opposed to and exclusive of it.
Such terminology is found both in the New and in the Old Testament ; e.g. " My spirit
shall not dwell in these men for they are flesh."

48 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

nection and constant interaction between the spiritual and the
carnal aspects of the human being as a whole, these two
demands — the preservation of the spirit from the flesh and the
realisation of the spirit in the flesh — cannot be fulfilled separately,
but inevitably pass into one another. In actual life spirit can
defend itself against the encroachments of the flesh only at the
expense of the latter, that is, by being partially realised in it ; at
the same time the realisation of the spirit is only possible on the
condition of its constantly defending itself against the continued
attempts of the flesh to destroy its independence.

The three chief moments in this process are : (i) the
distinction which the spirit inwardly draws between itself and the
flesh ; (2) the struggle of the spirit for its independence ; (3) the
supremacy achieved by the spirit over nature or the annihilation
of the evil carnal principle as such. The first moment, which
is characteristic of man in contradistinction to animals, is directly
given in the feeling of shame. The third, being the consequence
of the moral perfection already attained, cannot at the present
stage be the direct object of the moral demand or rule. It is
useless to confront even a moral man, while he is still imperfect,
with the categorical imperative "become at once immortal and
incorruptible ! " Thus only the second moment is left for ethics,
and our moral principle may be more closely defined as follows :
subordinate the flesh to the spirit^ in so far as it is necessary for the
dignity and the independence of the latter. Hoping finally for a
complete mastery over the physical forces in yourself and in nature
as a whole^ take for your immediate and binding purpose not to be^
at any rate^ the bondman of rebellious matter or chaos.

Flesh is existence that is not self-contained, that is wholly
directed outwards ; it is emptiness, hunger, and insatiability ; it
is lost in externality and ends in actual disruption. In contradis
tinction to it, spirit is existence determined inwardly, self-contained
and self-possessed. Its outward expression is due to its own
spontaneity, and does not cause it to become external or to be
lost and dissolved in externality. Hence self-preservation of the
spirit is, above all things, the preservation of its self-control.
This is the main point of all asceticism.

The human body, in its anatomic structure and physiological
functions, has no moral significance of its own. It may be the

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 49

expression and the instrument both of the flesh and of the
spirit. Hence the moral struggle between these two aspects or
our being takes place in the domain of the bodily or the organic
life as well, and assumes the form of a struggle for the mastery
over the body.

v /

With regard to the corporeal life our moral task consists in
not being passively determined by fleshly desires, especially in
reference to the two most important functions of our organism —
nutrition and reproduction.

By way of preliminary exercise, which in itself, however, has
no moral value, it is important for the spirit to acquire power
over such functions of our animal organism as are not directly
related to the ' lusts of the flesh ' — namely, over breathing and
sleep}-

Breathing is the fundamental condition of life and the
constant means of communication between our body and its
environment. For the power of the spirit over the body it is
desirable that this fundamental function should be under the
control of the human will. Consequently there arose long
ago and everywhere different ascetic practices with regard to
breathing. The practice and theory of breathing exercises is
found among the Indian hermits, among the sorcerers of ancient
and more recent times, among, the monks of Mount Athos and
similar monasteries, in Swedenborg, and, in our own day, in
Thomas Lake-Harris and Laurence Oliphant. The mystical
details of the matter have nothing to do with moral philosophy.
I will therefore content myself with a few general remarks. A
certain control of the will over breathing is required by ordinary
good manners. For ascetic purposes one merely goes further in
this direction. By constant exercise it is easy to learn not to
breathe through the mouth either when awake or when asleep ;
the next stage is to learn to suppress breathing altogether for a
longer or shorter time.2 The power acquired over this organic

1 I mean normal sleep ; abnormal will be dealt with further on.

2 The so-called ' nostril breathing,' and also complete stoppage of breathing, used
to be, and in places still is zealously practised by Orthodox ascetics, as one of the
conditions of the so-called 'meditation.'

E

50 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

function undoubtedly increases the strength of the spirit and
gives it a secure foundation for further ascetic achievements.

Sleep is a temporal break in the activity of the brain and of
the nervous system — the direct physiological instruments of the
spirit — and it therefore weakens the tie between the spiritual
and the bodily life. It is important that the spirit should not
in this case play a purely passive part. If sleep is caused by
physical causes, the spirit must be able, for motives of its own,
to ward it off, or to interrupt sleep that has already begun.
The very difficulty of this task, which is undoubtedly a possible
one, shows its importance. The power to overcome sleep and
to wake at will is a necessary demand of spiritual hygiene.
Moreover, sleep has another aspect, which distinguishes it from
breathing and other organic functions that are in the moral
sense indifferent, and connects it with nutrition and reproduction.
Like the two latter functions sleep may be misused to the
advantage of the carnal and to the detriment of the spiritual
life. The inclination to excessive sleep in itself shows the
predominance of the material or the passive principle ; a sur
render to this inclination and actual abuse of sleep undoubtedly
weaken the spirit and strengthen the lusts of the flesh. This
is the reason why in the history of ascetic practices — for
instance in Christian monasticism — struggle with sleep plays
so important a part. Of course, the loosening of the bond
between the spiritual and the corporeal life (or more exactly
between the conscious and the instinctive life) may be of two
kinds : sleepers must be distinguished from dreamers. But as a
general rule a special faculty to dream significant and prophetic
dreams indicates a degree of spiritual power that has been already
developed by ascetic practices — struggle with the pleasure of
carnal sleep among them.

VI

In animals the predominance of matter over form is due to
excess of food, as can be clearly seen in caterpillars among the
lower, and fattened pigs among the higher, animals.1 In man the
same cause (excess of food) leads to a predominance of the animal

1 See Krasota -v prirodie (Beauty in Nature) by the present author.

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 51

life, or the flesh, over the spirit. This is why abstinence in food
and drink — fasting — has always and everywhere been one of the
fundamental demands of ethics. Abstinence has reference, in
the first place, to the quantity — with regard to which there can be
no general rule — and secondly, to the quality of food. In this
last respect the rule has always and everywhere been abstinence
from animal food and especially from meat (i.e. from the flesh of
warm-blooded animals). The reason is that meat is more easily
and completely converted into blood, and increases the energy of
the carnal life more powerfully and rapidly than other foods do.1
Abstinence from flesh food can unquestionably be affirmed as a
universal rule. Objections to it cannot stand the test of criticism,
and have long ago been disposed of both by ethics and by natural
science. There was a time when eating raw or cooked human
flesh was regarded as normal.2 From the ascetic point of view
abstinence from meat (and animal food in general) is doubly
useful, first, because it weakens the force of the carnal life, and
secondly, because the hereditary habit has developed a natural
craving for such food, and abstinence from it exercises the will
at the expense of material inclinations and thus heightens the
spiritual energy.

As to drinking, the simplest good sense forbids excessive use
of strong drinks that leads to the loss of reason. The ascetic
principle requires, of course, more than this. Speaking generally,
wine heightens the energy of the nervous system, and, through
it, of the psychical life. At our stage of spiritual development
the soul is still dominated by carnal motives, and all that excites
and increases the nervous energy in the service of the soul goes
to strengthen this predominant carnal element, and is therefore
highly injurious to the spirit j so that here complete abstinence
from wine and strong drink is necessary. But at the higher

1 Another moral motive for abstaining from meat food is not ascetic but altruistic,
namely, the extension to animals of the law of love or pity. This motive is pre
dominant in the ethics of Buddhism and the ascetic one in the Christian Church.

2 According to the Biblical teaching the food of the normal human being before the
Fall consisted solely of raw fruits and herbs. This is still the rule for the strictest
monastic fast, both in the East and in the West (the trappists). Between this extreme
and the light Roman Catholic fast for the laity there are many degrees which have a
natural foundation (e.g. the distinction between the warm- and the cold-blooded animals,
owing to which fish is regarded as a food to be taken during fasts) but involve no
question of principle and have no universal significance.

52 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

stages of moral life which were sometimes attained even in the
pagan world — for instance by Socrates (see Plato's Symposium] —
the energy of the organism serves the spiritual rather than the
carnal purposes. In that case the increase of nervous energy (of
course within the limits compatible with bodily health) heightens
the activity of the spirit and therefore, in a certain measure, may
be harmless or even directly useful. There can be here only one
absolute and universal rule to preserve spiritual sobriety and a clear
mind.1

The most important and decisive significance in the struggle
of the spirit with the flesh in the physiological sphere belongs to
the sexual function. The element of moral wrong (the sin of
the flesh) is not to be found of course in the physical fact of
childbirth (and conception) which is, on the contrary, a certain
redemption of the sin — but only in the unlimited and blind desire
(lust of the flesh, concupiscentia] for an external, animal, and
material union with another person (in reality or imagination), a
union taken to be an end in itself, an independent object of en
joyment. The predominance of flesh over spirit expresses itself
most strongly, clearly, and permanently in the carnal union of two
persons. It is not for nothing that the immediate feeling of
shame is connected precisely with this act. To stifle or to
pervert its testimony j after many thousands of years of inward
and outward development, and from the heights of a refined in
telligence to pronounce good that which even the simple feeling of
the savage acknowledges to be wrong — this is, indeed, a disgrace
to humanity and a clear proof of our demoralisation. The actual
or the supposed necessity of a certain act for other purposes can
not be a sufficient reason for judging of its essential quality as
such. In some diseases it may be necessary to take poison, but
that necessity is itself an anomaly from the hygienic point of
view.

The moral question with regard to the sexual function is in
the first place the question of one's inner relation to it, of passing

1 At the present moral level of humanity the mastery of the carnal desires is the
rule, and the predominance of spiritual motives the exception, and one not to be de
pended upon ; so that total abstinence from strong drinks and all other stimulants may
well be preached without any practical disadvantage. But this is a pedagogical and pro
phylactic question involving no moral principle.

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 53

judgment upon it as such. How are we inwardly to regard this
fact from the point of view of the final norm, of the absolute
good — are we to approve of it or to condemn it ? Which path
must we choose and follow in respect to it : to affirm and develop
or to deny, limit, and finally to abolish it ? The feeling of shame
and the voice of conscience in each concrete case definitely and
clearly give the second answer, and all that is left for the moral
philosophy to do is to give it the form of a universal rational
principle. The carnal means of reproduction is for man an evil j
it expresses the predominance of the senseless material process
over the self-control of the spirit ; it is contrary to the dignity of
man, destructive of human love and life. Our moral relation to
this fact must be absolutely negative. We must adopt the path
that leads to its limitation and abolition ; how and when it will
be abolished in humanity as a whole or even in ourselves is a
question that has nothing to do with ethics. The entire trans
formation of our carnal life into spiritual life does not as an event
lie within our power, for it is connected with the general con
ditions of the historical and cosmical process. It cannot therefore
be the object of moral duty, rule, or law. What is binding upon
us, and what has moral significance, is our inner relation to this
fundamental expression of the carnal life. We must regard it as
an evil, be determined not to submit to that evil, and, so far as in
us lies, conscientiously carry out this determination. From this
point of view we may of course judge our external actions, but
we may only do so because we know their connection with their
inner moral conditions ; other people's actions in this sphere we
may not judge — we may only judge their principles. As a
principle the affirmation of the carnal relation of the sexes is in
any case an evil. Man's final acceptance of the kingdom of
death which is maintained and perpetuated by carnal repro
duction deserves absolute condemnation. Such is the positive
Christian point of view which decides this all-important ques
tion according to the spirit and not according to the letter,
and consequently without any external exclusiveness. " He
that is able to receive it, let him receive it." Marriage is
approved and sanctified, child-bearing is blessed, and celibacy
is praised as c the condition of the angels.' But this very de
signation of it as angelic seems to suggest a third and higher

54 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

path — the divine. For man in his ultimate destiny is higher
than the angels.1

If the Divine Wisdom, according to its wont, brings forth
out of evil a greater good and uses our carnal sins for the sake of
perfecting humanity by means of new generations,xthis, of course,
tends to its glory and to our comfort, but not to our justification.
It treats in exactly the same way all other evils, but this fact
cancels neither the distinction between good and evil nor the
obligatoriness of the former for us. Besides, the idea that the
preaching of sexual abstinence, however energetic and successful,
may prematurely stop the propagation of the human race and lead
to its annihilation is so absurd that one may justly doubt the
sincerity of those who profess to hold it. It is not likely that
any one can seriously fear this particular danger for humanity.
So long as the change of generations is necessary for the develop
ment of the human kind, the taste for bringing that change about
will certainly not disappear in men. But in any case, the moment
when all men will finally overcome the fleshly lust and become
entirely chaste — even if that moment, per impossibile^ came to
morrow — will be the end of the historical process and the begin
ning of 'the life to come' for all humanity; so that the very
idea of child-bearing coming to an end * too soon ' is absolute
nonsense, invented by hypocrites. As if any one, in surrendering
to the desire of the flesh, had ever thought of safeguarding thereby
the future of humanity ! 2

VII

All the rules of ascetic morality in the sphere of the bodily
life — to acquire power over breathing and sleep, to be temperate in
food and to abstain from fleshly lust — have essentially an inward
and morally psychological character, as rules for the will ; but
owing to the difference in their objects they do not stand in the

1 See Smysl liub-vi (The Meaning of Love] and also Zhlznennaya drama Platona (The
Drama of Plato's Life}.

2 I am not speaking here of the marriage union in its highest spiritual sense, which
has nothing to do either with the sin of the flesh or with child-bearing, but is the
pattern of the most perfect union between beings : " This is a great mystery ; but I
speak concerning Christ and the Church." Concerning this mystical meaning of
marriage see The Meaning of Love.

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 55

same relation to the psychological side of the carnal life. The
first and partly the second rule (with regard to breathing and
sleep) have for their object purely physiological functions which
are not, as such, hostile to the spirit, nor a source of danger to it.
The spirit simply wants to control them for the sake of increas
ing its own power for the more important struggle before it.
Nutrition and reproduction — and consequently the ascetic rules
with regard to them — have a different character. The positive
feeling of pleasure which accompanies these functions may
become an end for the will, bind the spiritual forces and draw
them into the stream of the carnal life. The latter of the two
functions is particularly incompatible (under ordinary conditions)
with the preservation of spiritual self-control. On the other
hand, breathing and sleep are merely processes in our own
organism, while nutrition and reproduction are connected with
external objects which, apart from their actual existence and
relation to us, may, as subjective presentations^ dominate the
imagination and the will and encroach on the domain of the
spirit ; hence the necessity of ascetic struggle with the inward
sins of the flesh, still more shameful than the outward. An
epicure whose mouth waters at the very idea of recherche dishes,
no doubt falls away from human dignity more than a person
who indulges himself at the table without particularly thinking
about the matter.

In this sense the ascetic attitude to the nutritive and the
sexual functions belongs to the psychological and not to the
physiological side of the struggle between the flesh and the
spirit. The struggle in this case is not against the functions of
the organism as such, but against the states of the soul — gluttony,
drunkenness, sensuality. These sinful propensities, which may
become passions and vices, are on a level with evil emotions such
as anger, envy, cupidity, etc. The latter passions, which are evil
and not merely shameful^ fall within the province of altruistic
and not of ascetic morality, for they involve a certain relation
to one's neighbours. But there are some general rules for the
inner, morally-psychological struggle with sinful inclinations as
such, whether they refer to other men or to our own material
nature.

The inner process in and through which an evil desire takes

56 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

possession of the self has three main stages. To begin with,
there arises in the mind the idea of some object or some action
which corresponds to one of the bad propensities of our nature.
This idea causes the spirit to reflect upon it. At that first stage
a simple act of will rejecting such reflection is sufficient. The
spirit must simply show its firmness or impermeability to foreign
elements.1 If this is not done, the reflection develops into an
imaginary picture of this or that nature — sensual, vindictive,
vain, and so on.2 This picture forces the mind to attend to it,
and cannot be got rid of by a mere negative act of will ; it is
necessary to draw the mind away by thinking in the opposite
direction (for instance, by thinking about death). But if at this
second stage the mind, instead of being drawn away from the
picture of sin, dwells upon it and identifies itself with it,
then the third moment inevitably comes when not only the
mind, secretly impelled by the evil desire, but the whole spirit
gives itself up to the sinful thought and enjoys it. Neither a
rejecting act of will nor a distracting reflection of the mind
can then save the spirit from bondage — practical moral work
is necessary to re-establish the inner equilibrium in the whole
man. Otherwise the victory of the sinful emotion over the
spirit will become a passion and a vice. Man will lose his
rational freedom, and moral rules will lose their power over
him.

1 Ecclesiastical writers describe this rule as "dashing the babes of Babylon against
the stones," following the allegorical line in the Psalms : " O daughter of Babylon who
art to be destroyed ; happy shall he be that taketh and dashes thy little ones against
the stones" (Babylon = the kingdom of sin; a babe of Babylon = a sin conceived in
thought and as yet undeveloped ; stone = the firmness of faith).

2 When one is young and has a lively imagination and little spiritual experience,
the evil thought develops very rapidly, and, reaching absurd proportions, calls forth "a
strong moral reaction. Thus you think of a person you dislike, and experience a
slight emotion of injury, indignation, and anger. If you do not immediately dash this
'babe of Babylon' against the stones, your imagination, obedient to the evil passion, will
immediately draw a vivid picture before you. You meet your enemy and put him into
an awkward position. All his worthlessness is exposed. You experience the -velhitas of
magnanimity, but the passion is roused and overwhelms you. At first you keep within
the limits of good breeding. You make subtly stinging remarks which, however, soon
become more stinging than subtle ; then you ' insult him verbally,' and then you 'assault
him.' Your devilishly strong fist deals victorious blows. The scoundrel is felled to the
ground, the scoundrel is killed, and you dance on his corpse like a cannibal. One can
go no further — nothing is left but to cross oneself and renounce it all in disgust.

THE ASCETIC PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 57

Ethics is the hygiene and not the therapeutics of the
spiritual life.

VIII

The supremacy of the spirit over the flesh is necessary in
order to preserve the moral dignity of man. The principle of
true asceticism is the principle of spiritual self-preservation.
But the inner self-preservation of a separate man, of a being who,
though spiritual (i.e. possessing reason and will), is nevertheless
limited or relative in his separateness, cannot be the absolute good or
the supreme and final end of life. The slavery of man to fleshly
desires in the wide sense of the term, i.e. to all that is senseless
and contrary to reason, transforms him into the worst species
of animal, and is, no doubt, evil. In this sense no one can
honestly argue against asceticism, that is, against self-restraint as
a principle. Every one agrees that incapacity to resist animal
instincts is a weakness of the spirit, shameful for a human being,
and therefore bad. The capacity for such resistance or self-
restraint is then a good, and must be accepted as a norm from
which definite rules of conduct may be deduced. On this point,
as on others, moral philosophy merely explains and elaborates the
testimony of ordinary human consciousness. Apart from any
principles, gluttony, drunkenness, lewdness immediately call forth
disgust and contempt, and abstinence from these vices meets with
instinctive respect, i.e. is acknowledged as a good. This good,
however, taken by itself, is not absolute. The power of the spirit
over the flesh, or the strength of will acquired by rightful abstin
ence, may be used for immoral purposes. A strong will may be evil.
A man may suppress his lower nature in order to boast or to pride
himself on his superior power j such a victory of the spirit is not
a good. It is still worse if the self-control of the spirit and the
concentration of the will are used to the detriment of other people,
even apart from the purposes of low gain. Asceticism has been,
and is, successfully practised by men given to spiritual pride,
hypocrisy, and vanity, and even by vindictive, cruel, and selfish
men. According to the general verdict, such an ascetic is in the
moral sense far inferior to a simple-hearted drunkard or glutton or
to a kind profligate. Asceticism in itself is not necessarily a good,

58 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and cannot therefore be the supreme or the absolute principle of
morality. The true (the moral) ascetic acquires control over the
flesh, not simply for the sake of increasing the powers of the spirit,
but for furthering the realisation of the Good. Asceticism which
liberates the spirit from shameful (carnal) passions only to attach
it more closely to evil (spiritual) passions is obviously a false or
immoral asceticism.1 Its true prototype, according to the Christian
idea, is the devil, who does not eat or drink and remains in celibacy.
If, then, from the moral point of view we cannot approve of a
wicked or a pitiless ascetic, it follows that the principle of asceticism
has only a relative moral significance, namely, that it is conditioned
by its connection with the principle of altruism, the root of which
is pity. I now pass to consider this second moral principle.

1 If the suppression of the flesh is taken not as a means for good or evil but as an
end in itself, we get a peculiar kind of false asceticism which identifies flesh with the
physical body, and considers every bodily torment a virtue. Although this false asceticism
of self-laceration has no evil purpose to begin with, in its further development it easily
becomes an evil : it either proves to be a slow suicide or becomes a peculiar kind of
sensuality. It would be unwise, however, thus to condemn all cases of self- laceration.
Natures that have a particularly strong material life may require heroic means for its
suppression. One mustnot therefore indiscriminately condemn Stylitism, fetters,and other
similar means of mortifying the flesh that were in use in the heroic times of asceticism.

CHAPTER III

PITY AND ALTRUISM

IT has for a long time been thought — and many are beginning to
think so again — that the highest virtue or holiness is to be found
in asceticism and c mortification of the flesh,' in suppressing natural
inclinations and affections, in abstinence and freedom from
passions. We have seen that this ideal undoubtedly contains some
truth, for it is clear that the higher or the spiritual side of
man must dominate the lower or the material. The efforts of
will in this direction are acts of spiritual self-preservation and are
the first condition of all morality. The first condition^ however,
cannot be taken to be the ultimate end. Man must strengthen his
spirit and subordinate his flesh, not because this is the purpose of
his life, but because it is only when he is free from the bondage to
blind and evil material desires that he can serve truth and goodness
in the right way and attain real perfection.

The rules of abstinence strengthen the spiritual power of the
man who practises them. But in order that the strong spirit
may have moral worth — i.e. that it may be good and not evil — it
must unite the power over its own flesh with a rightful and
charitable attitude to other beings. History has shown that, apart
from this condition, the supremacy of the ascetic principle, even
when combined with a true religion, leads to terrible conse
quences. The ministers of the Mediaeval Church, who used to
torture and burn heretics, Jews, sorcerers and witches, were for the
most part men irreproachable from the ascetic point of view. But
the one-sided force of the spirit and the absence of pity made
them devils incarnate. The bitter fruits of mediaeval asceticism

59

60 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

sufficiently justify the reaction against it, which, in the sphere of
moral philosophy, has led to the supremacy of the altruistic principle
in morality.

This principle is deeply rooted in our being in the form of
the feeling of pity which man has in common with other living
creatures. If the feeling of shame differentiates man from the
rest of nature and distinguishes him from other animals, the feel
ing of pity, on the contrary, unites him with the whole world of
the living. It does so in a double sense : in the first place
because man shares it with all other living creatures, and secondly
because all living creatures can and must be the objects of that
feeling to man.

II

That the natural basis of our moral relation to others is the
feeling of pity or compassion, and not the feeling of unity or
solidarity in general, is a truth which is independent of any
system of metaphysics l and in no way involves a pessimistic view
of the world and of life. As is well known, Schopenhauer main
tains that the ultimate nature of the universe is Will, and will is
essentially a state of dissatisfaction (for satisfaction implies that
there is nothing to wish for). Hence dissatisfaction or suffering
is the fundamental and positive determination of all existence in
its inward aspect, and the inner moral bond between beings is
compassion. But altogether apart from this doubtful theory
— and the equally doubtful calculations of Hartmann, who tries
to prove that the amount of pain in humanity is incomparably
greater than the amount of pleasure — we find that from the nature
of the case the only basis of the moral relation to other beings is,
as a matter of principle^ to be found in pity or compassion, and
certainly not in co-rejoicing or co-pleasure.

Human delight, pleasure, and joy may of course be innocent
and even positively good — and in that case sharing in them has
a positive moral character. But, on the other hand, human
pleasures may be, and often are, immoral. A wicked and vindictive
man finds pleasure in insulting and tormenting those near him,
rejoices in their humiliation, delights in the harm he has done.

1 Such as the doctrine of Buddhism or Schopenhauer's ' Philosophy of the Will.'

PITY AND ALTRUISM 61

A sensual man finds the chief joy of life in profligacy ; a cruel man
in killing animals or even human beings ; a drunkard is happy
when he is stupefying himself with drink, etc. In all these cases the
feeling of pleasure cannot be separated from the bad actions which
produce it, and sometimes, indeed, the pleasure gives an immoral
character to actions which would in themselves be indifferent.
Thus when a soldier in war kills an enemy at the word of command
from no other motive than ' his duty as a soldier,' no one would
accuse him of immoral cruelty, whatever our attitude to war might
be. But it is a different thing if he finds pleasure in killing and
bayonets a man with relish. In more simple cases the thing is
clearer still ; thus it is obvious that the immorality of drunkenness
consists not in the external action of swallowing certain drinks but
in the inner pleasure which a man finds in artificially stupefying
himself.

But if a certain pleasure is in itself immoral, the participation
in it by another person (co-rejoicing, co-pleasure) also receives an
immoral character. The fact is that positive participation in a

pleasure implies the approval of that pleasure. Thus in sharing

"^*-j1P%t-— ^a]Uu_
the drunkard's .defight Tn ' nis ravourite pleasure I approve of

drunkenness ; in sharing somebody's joy at successful revenge
I approve of vindictiveness. And since these pleasures are bad
pleasures, those who sympathise with them approve of what is
evil, and consequently are themselves guilty of immorality. Just
as participation in a crime is itself regarded as a crime, so
sympathy with vicious pleasure or delight must itself be pro
nounced vicious. And indeed sympathy with an evil pleasure
not only involves an approval of it, but also presupposes the same
bad propensity in the sympathiser. Only a drunkard delights in
another person's drunkenness, only a vindictive man rejoices in
another's revenge. Participation in the pleasures or joys of others
may then be good or bad according to their object ; and if it may
be immoral, it cannot as such be the basis of the moral relation.

The same thing cannot be said about suffering and compas
sion. According to the very idea of it, suffering is a state in
which the will of the one who suffers has no direct and positive
part. When we speak of ' voluntary suffering,' we mean, not
that suffering is desired as such, but that the object of will is
that which makes suffering necessary, in other words, that the

62 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

object of will is the good which is attained by suffering. A
martyr undergoes torments, not for their own sake, but because
in the circumstances they are a necessary consequence of his
faith and 'a means to higher glory and to the kingdom of
heaven. On the other hand, suffering may be deserved, i.e.
its cause may lie in bad actions ; but the suffering as such is
distinct from its cause and contains no moral guilt ; on the
contrary, it is regarded as its expiation and redemption. Though
drunkenness is a sin, no moralist, however stern, would pronounce
the headache that results from drinking to be a sin also. For
this reason participation in the suffering of others (even when
they deserve it) — i.e. pity or compassion — can never be immoral.
In commiserating with one who suffers I do not in the least
approve of the evil cause of his suffering.1 Pity for the criminal's
suffering does not mean approval or justification of his crime.
On the contrary, the greater my pity for the sad consequences of
a man's sin, the greater my condemnation of the sin.

Participation in the pleasures of others may always have an
element of self-interest. Even in the case of an old man sharing
the joy of a child doubt may be felt with regard to the altruistic
nature of his sentiment ; for in any case it is pleasant for the old
,man to refresh the memory of his own happy childhood. On
the contrary, all genuine feeling of regret at the suffering of
others, whether moral or physical, is painful for the person who
experiences that feeling, and is therefore opposed to his egoism.
This is clear from the fact that sincere grief about others disturbs
our personal joy, damps our mirth, that is, proves to be in
compatible with the state of selfish satisfaction. Genuine com
passion or pity can have no selfish motives and is purely
altruistic^ while the feeling of co-rejoicing or co-pleasure is, from
the moral point of view, a mixed and indefinite feeling.

1 An apparent instance to the contrary is the case of a person sympathising with
another who is grieved at the failure of his crime. But, in truth, even in this case in so
far as sympathy arises solely out of pity it does not in the least refer to the bad cause
of the grief, in no way presupposes an approval of it, and therefore is good and innocent.
But if, in being sorry for the murderer who missed his aim, I also deplore his failure,
the immorality will lie not in my pity for the criminal, but in my lack of pity for
his victim. Speaking generally, when several persons prove to be at one in some
wrong, the moral condemnation refers not to the fact of their solidarity, but only to
the bad object of it.

PITY AND ALTRUISM 63

III

There is another reason why participation in the joys or
pleasures of others cannot in itself have the same fundamental
importance for ethics as the feeling of pity or compassion.
The demand of reason is that morality should only be based
upon such feelings as always contain an impulse for definite
action and, being generalised, give rise to a definite moral
principle or principles. But pleasure or joy is the end of action ;
in it the purpose of the activity is reached, and participation in
the pleasure of others as well as the experience of one's own
pleasure contains no impulse and no ground for further action.
Pity, on the contrary, directly urges us to act in order to help a
fellow-being and to save him from suffering. The action may
be purely inward — thus pity for my enemy may prevent me
from insulting or injuring him — but in any case it is an action,
and not a passive state like joy or pleasure. Of course, I may find
inward satisfaction in the fact that I did not hurt my neighbour,
but this can only happen after the act of will has taken place.
Similarly in the case of rendering help to a fellow-being who is
in pain or in need, the pleasure or joy resulting therefrom, both
for him and for the person who helps him, is only the final
consequence and the culmination of the altruistic act, and not
its source or its ground. If I see or hear that some one is
suffering, one of two things happens. Either that other person's
suffering calls forth in me also a certain degree of pain and I
experience pity — in which case that feeling is a direct and
sufficient reason for me to render active help. Or, if another's
suffering does not rouse pity in me, or does not rouse it
sufficiently to incite me to act, the idea of the pleasure which
would ensue from my action would obviously be still less likely
to do so. It is clear that an abstract and conditioned thought
of a future mental state cannot possibly have more effect than
the immediate contemplation or concrete representation of actual
physical and mental states which call for direct action. There
fore the true ground or the producing cause (causa efficient] of
every altruistic action is the perception or the idea of another
person's suffering as it actually exists at the moment, and not

64 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the thought of the pleasure which may arise in the future as
the result of the benevolent act. Of course, if a person decides
out of pity to help a fellow- being in distress, he may, if he
have time to do so, imagine — especially on the ground of the
remembered experiences in the past — the joy he will thereby give
to himself and to that other person. But to take this con
comitant and accidental thought for the true motive of action is
contrary both to logic and to psychological experience.

On the one hand, then, participation in the actual joys and
pleasures of others cannot from the very nature of the case contain
either a stimulus for action or a rule of conduct, for in these
states satisfaction is already attained. On the other hand, a con
ditional representation of future pleasures, which are supposed to
follow upon the removal of the suffering, can only be a secondary
and an indirect addition to the actual feeling of compassion or
pity which moves us to do active good. Consequently it is this
feeling alone which must be pronounced to be the true ground
of altruistic conduct.

Those who pity the sufferings of others will certainly partici
pate in their joys and pleasures when the latter are harmless and
innocent. But this natural consequence of the moral relation to
others cannot be taken as the basis of morality. That alone is
truly good which is good in itself, and therefore always preserves
its good character, never becoming evil. Therefore the morality
(or the good) in any given sphere of relations can only be based
upon such data from which a general and absolute rule of
conduct may be deduced. Such precisely is the nature of pity
towards our fellow-beings. To pity all that suffers is always and
unconditionally good ; it is a rule that requires no reservations.
But participation in the joys and pleasures of others may be
approved conditionally only, and even when it is laudable it
contains, as we have seen, no rule of conduct.

IV

The unquestionable and familiar fact that a distinct individual
being may, as it were, transcend in feeling the limits of his
individuality, and respond painfully to the suffering of others,
experiencing it as if it were his own pain, may appear to some

PITY AND ALTRUISM 65

minds mysterious and enigmatic. It was regarded as such by the
philosopher who found in compassion the sole foundation of
morality.

" How is it possible," he asks, " that suffering which is not
mine should become an immediate motive of my action in the
same way as my own suffering does ? " " This presupposes,"
he goes on, " that I have to a certain extent identified myself
with another, and that the barrier between the self and the not
self has been for the moment removed. It is then only that
the position of another, his want, his need, his suffering,
immediately (?) becomes mine. I no longer see him then as he is
given me in empirical perception — as something foreign and
indifferent (?) to me, as something absolutely (?) separate from
me. On the contrary, in compassion it is I who suffer in him,
although his skin does not cover my nerves. Only through
such identification can his suffering, his need, become a motive
for me in a way in which ordinarily only my own suffering can.
This is a highly mysterious phenomenon — it is a real mystery
of Ethics, for it is something for which reason cannot directly
account (? !) and the grounds of which cannot be discovered
empirically. And yet it is of everyday occurrence. Each has
experienced it himself and seen it in other people. It happens
every day before our eyes on a small scale in individual cases
every time that, moved by an immediate impulse, without
any further reflection, a man helps another and defends him,
sometimes risking his own life for the sake of a person whom
he sees for the first time, thinking of nothing but the obvious
distress and need of that person. It happens on a large scale when
a whole nation sacrifices its blood and its property for the sake of
defending or setting free another, oppressed, nation. For such
actions to deserve unconditional moral approval, it is necessary
that there should be present that mysterious act of compassion
or of inner identification of oneself with another, without any
ulterior motives." *

This discussion of the mysterious character of compassion is
distinguished by literary eloquence more than by philosophic
truth. The mystery is not to be found in the fact itself, but

1 Schopenhauer, Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1860,
p. 230.

F

66 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

is due to a false description, which lays exaggerated emphasis
on the extreme terms of the relation, and leaves the connecting
links between them entirely out of account. In his sphere
Schopenhauer abused the rhetorical method of contrast or
antithesis quite as much as Victor Hugo did in his. The
matter is described in such a way as if a given being, absolutely
separate from another, all of a sudden immediately identified
itself with that other in the feeling of compassion. This
would, indeed, be highly mysterious. But, in truth, neither
the absolute separateness nor the immediate identification of
which Schopenhauer speaks exists at all. To understand any
relation one must take first the earliest and most elementary
instance of it. Take the maternal instinct of animals. When a
dog defends her puppies or suffers at losing them, where does
all the mystery of which Schopenhauer speaks come in ? Are
these puppies something 4 foreign and indifferent ' to their mother,
and 'absolutely separate' from her? Between her and them
there was from the first a real physical and organic connection,
clear and obvious to the simplest observation and independent
of all metaphysics. These creatures were for a time actually a
part of her own body, her nerves and theirs had been covered by
one and the same skin, and the very beginning of their existence
involved a change in her organism, and was painfully reflected
in her sensations.1 At birth this real organic connection is
weakened, becomes looser, so to speak, but it is not completely
severed or replaced by 'absolute separateness.' Therefore the
participation of a mother in the sufferings of her children is as
much a natural fact as the pain we feel when we cut a finger
or dislocate a leg. In a sense, of course, this, too, is mysterious —
but not in the sense in which the philosopher of compassion
takes it to be. Now all the other and more complex manifesta
tions of the feeling of pity have a similar ground. All that
exists, and, in particular, all living beings are connected by the
fact of their compresence in one and the same world, and by the
unity of origin ; all spring from one common mother — nature,

1 Certain animals, like human mothers, have been observed to suffer from nausea
a conceftu. The maternal feeling established on the physical basis may afterwards, like
all feelings, be diverted from its natural object and transferred to the young of another
animal that have been substituted for her own.

PITY AND ALTRUISM 67

of which they are a part ; nowhere do we find the l absolute
separateness ' of which Schopenhauer speaks. The natural organic
connection of all beings as parts of one whole is given in
experience, and is not merely a speculative idea. Hence the
psychological expression of that connection — the inner partici
pation of one being in the suffering of others, compassion or
pity — can be understood even from the empirical point of view
as the expression of the natural and obvious solidarity of all
that exists. This participation of beings in one another is in
keeping with the general plan of the universe, is in harmony
with reason or perfectly rational. What is senseless or irrational
is the mutual estrangement of beings, their subjective separate-
ness, contradictory of their objective unity. It is this inner
egoism and not the mutual sympathy between the different parts
of one nature that really is mysterious and enigmatic. Reason
can give no direct account of it, and its grounds are not to
be found empirically.

Absolute separateness is merely affirmed but is not established
by egoism ; it neither does nor can exist as a fact. On the other
hand, the mutual connection between beings which finds its
psychological expression in sympathy or pity is certainly not of
the nature of immediate identification as Schopenhauer takes it
to be. When I am sorry for my friend who has a headache the
feeling of sympathy does not as a rule become a headache. So far
from my being identified with him even our states remain distinct,
and I clearly distinguish my head, which does not ache, from his,
which does. Also, so far as I am aware, it has never happened that a
compassionate man, who jumps into the water to save another from
drowning, should take that other person for himself or himself for
that other. Even a hen — a creature more noted for her maternal
instinct than for intelligence — clearly understands the distinction
between herself and her chicks, and, therefore, behaves in relation
to them in a certain way, which would be impossible if in her
maternal compassion * the barrier between the self and the not self
were removed.' If this were the case, the hen might confuse herself
with her chickens, and, when hungry, might ascribe that sensation
to them and start feeding them, although in reality they were
satisfied and she almost starving ; or, another time, she might feed
herself at their expense. In truth, in all these real cases of pity,

68 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the barriers between the being who pities and those whom it pities
are not removed at all ; they simply prove not to be so absolute
and impermeable as the abstract reflection of scholastic philosophers
would make them.

The removal of barriers between the self and the not self or
immediate identification is merely a figure of speech and not an
expression of real fact. Like the vibration of chords that sound
in unison, so the bond of compassion between living beings is not
simply identity but harmony of the similar. From this point of
view, too, the fundamental moral fact of pity or compassion com
pletely corresponds to the real nature of things or to the meaning
of the universe. For the indissoluble oneness of the world is not
a mere empty unity, but embraces the whole range of determinate
variations.

As befits an ultimate moral principle, the feeling of pity has no
external limits for its application. Starting with the narrow sphere
of maternal love, strongly developed even in the higher animals,
it may, in the case of man, as it gradually becomes wider, pass
from the family to the clan and the tribe, to the civic com
munity, the entire nation, to all humanity, and finally embrace all
that lives. In individual cases, when confronted with actual pain
or need, we may actively pity not only every man — though belong
ing to a different race or religion — but even every animal ; this is
beyond dispute and is, indeed, quite usual. Less usual is such a
breadth of compassion which, without any obvious reason, at once
embraces in a keen feeling of pity all the multitude of living beings
in the universe. It is difficult to susp'ect of artificial rhetoric or
exaggerated pathos the following description of universal pity as an
actual mental state — very unlike the state of the so-called ' world-
woe ' (Weltschmerz}. " And I was asked what is a pitying heart ?
And I answered : the glow in a man's heart for all creation, for
men, for birds, for animals, for demons^ and for creatures of all
kinds. When he thinks of them or looks upon them, his eyes
gush with tears. Great and poignant pity possesses him and his
heart is wrung with suffering, and he cannot bear either to hear
or to see any harm or grief endured by any creature. And hence
every hour he prays with tears even for the dumb beasts, and for

PITY AND ALTRUISM 69

the enemies of truth and those who do him wrong, that God may
preserve them and have mercy on them ; and for all of the
crawling kind he prays with great pity which rises up in his heart
beyond measure so that in that he is made like to God." l

In this description of the fundamental altruistic motive in its
highest form we find neither ' immediate identification ' nor
' removing the barriers between the self and the not se/f.' It
differs from Schopenhauer's account like living truth from literary
eloquence. These words of the Christian writer also prove that
there is no need, as Schopenhauer mistakenly thought, to turn to
Indian dramas or to Buddhism in order to learn the prayer 'May
all that lives be free from suffering.'

VI

The universal consciousness of humanity decidedly pronounces
pity to be a good thing. A person who manifests this feeling is called
good ; the more deeply he experiences and the more he acts upon
it, the more good he is considered to be. A pitiless man more than
any other is called wicked. It does not follow, however, that the
whole of morality or the essence of all good can be reduced, as it
often is, to compassion or ' sympathetic feeling.'

" Boundless compassion to all living beings," observes
Schopenhauer, " is the surest guarantee of moral conduct and
requires no casuistry. The man who is full of that feeling will be
certain not to injure any one, not to cause suffering to any one ; all
his actions will be sure to bear the stamp of truth and mercy. Let
any one say, 'This man is virtuous, but he knows no compassion,' or
'He is an unrighteous and wicked man, but he is very compassionate,'
and the contradiction will be at once apparent." ; These words
are only true with considerable reservations. There is no doubt
that pity or compassion is a real basis of morality, but Schopenhauer's
obvious mistake is in regarding that feeling as the only foundation
of all morality.3

1 The Sayings of the Holy Father Isaac the Syrian, Hermit and Ascetic, Bishop of the
City of Ninety, p. 277.

2 Die beiden Grundprobleme der Ethik, 2nd ed., p. 23.

3 It is all the more necessary for me to indicate this important error of the fashionable
philosopher as I myself was guilty of it when I wrote my dissertation Kritika otvletchonnih
natchal (The Critique of Abstract Principles}.

70 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

In truth it is only one of the three ultimate principles of
morality and it has a definite sphere of application, namely, it
determines our rightful relation to other beings in our world. Pity
is the only true foundation of altruism^ but altruism and morality
are not identical : the former is only a part of the latter. It is
true that ' boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest
and most secure foundation,' not of moral action in general, as
Schopenhauer mistakenly affirms, but of moral action in relation
to other beings who are the object of compassion. This relation
however, important as it is, does not exhaust the whole of morality.
Besides the relation to his fellow-men, man stands also in a certain
relation to his own material nature and to the higher principles
of all existence, and these relations, too, require to be morally
determined so that the good in them may be distinguished from
the evil. A man who is full of pity will certainly not injure or
cause suffering to any one — that is, he will not injure any one else^
but he may very well injure himself by indulging in carnal passions
which lower his human dignity. In spite of a most compassionate
heart one may be inclined to profligacy and other low vices, which,
though not opposed to compassion, are opposed to morality — and
this fact shows that the two ideas do not coincide. Schopenhauer
rightly insists that one cannot say, l This man is malicious and un
just, but he is very compassionate ' ; curiously enough, however, he
forgets that one may, and often has to say, c So and so is a sensual
and dissolute man — a profligate, a glutton, a drunkard — but he is
very kind-hearted ' ; equally familiar is the phrase, ' Although so
and so lives an exemplary asceti.c life, he is pitiless to his neighbours.'
This means that on the one hand the virtue of abstinence is possible
apart from pity, and on the other that although strongly developed
sympathetic feelings — pity, kindness — exclude the possibility of
evil actions in the narrow sense of the term, i.e. cruel actions
directly hurtful to others, they do not by any means prevent
shameful actions. And yet such actions are not morally indifferent
even from the altruistic point of view. A kind drunkard and
profligate may be sorry for other people and never wish to hurt them,
yet by his vice he certainly injures not only himself but his family,
which he may finally ruin without the least intention of doing them
harm. If then pity does not prevent such conduct, our inward
opposition to it must be founded upon another aspect of our moral

PITY AND ALTRUISM 71

nature, namely, upon the feeling of shame. The rules of
asceticism1 spring from it in the same way as the rules of altruism
develop out of the feeling of pity.

VII

The true essence of pity or compassion is certainly not the
immediate identification of oneself with another, but the re
cognition of the inherent worth of that other — the recognition of
his right to existence and to possible welfare. When I pity
another man or animal, I do not confuse myself with him or take
him for myself and myself for him. I merely see in him a
creature that is akin and similar to me, with a consciousness like
mine, and wishing, like I do, to live and to enjoy the good things
of life. In admitting my own right to the fulfilment of such
a desire, I admit it in the case of others ; being painfully con
scious of every violation of this right in relation to me, of every
injury to myself, I respond in like manner to the violation of the
rights of others, to the injury of others. Pitying myself, I pity
others. When I see a suffering creature I do not identify or
confuse it with myself, I merely imagine myself in its place and,
admitting its likeness to myself, compare its states to my own,
and, as the phrase is, 'enter into its position.' This equalisation
(but not identification) between myself and another which im
mediately and unconsciously takes place in the feeling of pity, is
raised by reason to the level of a clear and distinct idea.

The intellectual content (the idea) of pity or compassion, taken
in its universality, independently of the subjective mental states
in which it is manifested — i.e. taken logically and not psychologic
ally, — is truth and justice. It is true that other creatures are
similar to me, and it is just that I should feel about them as I do
about myself. This position, clear in itself, becomes still more
clear when tested negatively. When I am pitiless or indifferent
to others, consider myself at liberty to injure them and do
not think it my duty to help them, they appear to me not what
they really are. A being appears as merely a thing, something

1 It is curious that Schopenhauer admitted and even greatly exaggerated the im
portance of asceticism, but for some reason he completely excluded it from his moral
teaching. It is one of the instances of the incoherent thinking of the famous writer.

72 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

living appears as dead, conscious — as unconscious, what is akin to
me appears as foreign, and what is like me as absolutely differ
ent. The relation in which an object is taken to be not what
it really is is a direct denial of truth ; and actions that follow
from it will be unjust. Therefore the opposite relation which is
subjectively expressed as the inner feeling of sympathy, pity, or
compassion is, from the objective point of view, expressive of
truth) and actions following from it will be Just. To measure by a
different measure is acknowledged by all to be an elementary in
stance of injustice ; but when I am pitiless to others, i.e. treat
them as soulless and rightless things, and affirm myself as a
conscious being fully possessed of rights, I evidently measure
with different measures and crudely contradict truth and justice.
On the contrary, when I pity others as I do myself, I measure
with one measure and consequently act in accordance with truth
and justice.

In so far as it is a constant quality and a practical principle,
pitilessness is called egoism. In its pure and unmixed form consist
ent egoism does not exist, at any rate not among human beings.
But in order to understand the general nature of egoism as such,
it is necessary to characterise it as a pure and unconditional
principle. Its essence consists in this : an absolute opposition,
an impassable gulf is fixed between one's own self and other
beings. I am everything to myself and must be everything to
others, but others are nothing in themselves and become some
thing only as a means for me. My life and welfare is an end in
itself, the life and welfare of- others are only a means for my
ends, the necessary environment for my self-assertion. I am the
centre and the world only a circumference. Such a point of
view is seldom put forward, but with some reservations it un
doubtedly lies at the root of our natural life. Absolute egoists
are not to be found on earth : every human being appears to feel
pity at least for some one, every human being sees a fellow-creature
in some one person at least. But restricted within certain
limits — usually very narrow ones — egoism manifests itself all
the more clearly in other, wider spheres. A person who does
not take up the egoistic attitude towards his own relatives, i.e.
who includes his family within his self, all the more mercilessly
opposes this widened self to all that is external to it. A person

PITY AND ALTRUISM 73

who extends his self — quite superficially as a rule — to include
his whole nation, adopts the egoistic point of view, with all the
greater fierceness, both for himself and for his nation, in relation
to other nations and races, etc. The fact that the circle of inner
solidarity is widened and the egoism is transferred from the in
dividual to the family, the nation, and the state is unquestionably
of great moral significance to the life of humanity, for within a
given circle selfishness is restricted, outweighed, or even com
pletely replaced by humane and moral relations. But this does
not destroy the principle of egoism in humanity, which consists in
the absolute inner opposition of oneself and one's own to what is
other than it — in fixing a gulf between the two. This principle
is essentially false, for in reality there is not, and there cannot be,
any such gulf, any absolute opposition. It is clear that exclusive-
ness, egoism, pitilessness is essentially the same thing as untruth.
Egoism is in the first place fantastic and unreal^ it affirms what
does not and cannot exist. To consider oneself (in the narrow
or in the wide sense) as the exclusive centre of the universe is at
bottom as absurd as to believe oneself to be a glass seat or the
constellation of Ursa Major.1

If, then, egoism is condemned by reason as a senseless affirma
tion of what is non-existent and impossible, the opposite principle
of altruism, psychologically based upon the feeling of pity, is
entirely justified both by reason and by conscience. In virtue of
this principle the individual person admits that other beings are,
just like himself, relative centres of being and of living force.
This is an affirmation of truth, an admission of what truly is.
From this truth, to which the feeling of pity, roused by other
beings akin and . alike to us, inwardly bears witness in every soul,
reason deduces a principle or a law with regard to all other beings :
Do unto others as you would they should do unto you.

1 Theoretical proof of the reality of the external world and of the inner conscious
life of beings is offered in metaphysics. Moral philosophy is concerned only with a
general consciousness of this truth, which even the extreme egoist involuntarily accepts.
When for his selfish purposes he wants the help of other people not dependent on him,
he treats them, contrary to his fundamental principle, as actual, independent persons
fully possessed of rights ; he tries to persuade them to side with him, takes their own
interests into consideration. Thus egoism contradicts itself, and is in any case a. false
point of view.

74 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

VIII

The general rule or principle of altruism l naturally falls into
two more particular ones. The beginning of this division may
be seen already in the fundamental altruistic feeling of pity. If
I am genuinely sorry for a person, in the first place I would not
myself cause him harm or suffering, would not injure him, and
secondly, when, independently of me, he suffers pain or injury,
I would help him. Hence follow two rules of altruism, the
negative and the positive : (i) Do not to others what you do not
wish others to do to you. (2) Do to others what you would wish
others to do to you. More briefly and simply, these two rules, which
are usually joined together, are expressed as follows : Do not injure
any one^ and help every one so far as you are able (Neminem laede,
imo omneSy quantum potesy juva).

The first, negative, rule is, more particularly, called the rule of
justice, and the second the rule of mercy. But this distinction is
not quite correct, for the second rule, too, is founded upon justice :
if I want others to help me when in need, it is just that I, too,
should help them. On the other hand, if I do not wish to injure
any one, it is because I recognise others to be living and sentient
beings like myself; and in that case I will, of course, as much as
in me lies, save them from suffering. I do not injure them because
I pity them, and if I pity them, I will also help them. Mercy
presupposes justice, and justice demands mercy — they are merely
different aspects or different manifestations of one and the same

thing.*

1 This term, introduced by the founder of Positivism, Auguste Comte, is the exact
expression of the logical antithesis to egoism and therefore answers to a real need of
philosophical language (altruism, from alter, other, like egoism, from ego, self). Our
violent opponents of foreign words ought to be consistent, and if they object to altruism,
they should also renounce the word egoism. Instead of these terms they may use the
words 'yatchest-vo ' (' selfness ') and ' druzhatchestvo ' (' otherism ') ; the former term, I
believe, has already been used. If it were a question of merely psychological definitions,
the words self-love and love of others could be substituted, but including as they do the
idea of love, they are unsuitable for the designation of ethical principles which are
concerned not with feelings but with rules of action. One may love oneself far more
than others, and yet, on principle, work for the good of others as much as for one's
own. Such a person would undoubtedly be an altruist, but it would be equally absurd
to speak of him as 'a lover of self or 'a lover of others.'

2 In Hebrew sedek means 'just,' and the noun derived from it, sedeka, means
' benevolence."

PITY AND ALTRUISM 75

There is a real distinction between these two sides or degrees
of altruism, but there is not, and there cannot be, any opposition
or contradiction. Not to help others means to injure them ; a
consistently just man will inevitably do works of mercy, and the
truly merciful man cannot at the same time be unjust. The
fact that the two altruistic rules, in spite of all the difference
between them, are inseparable^ is very important as providing
the foundation for the inner connection between legal justice
and morality, and between the political and the spiritual life of
the community.

The general rule of altruism — 'do unto others as you would they
should do unto you ' — by no means presupposes the material or the
qualitative equality of all the individuals. There exists no such
equality in nature, and it would be meaningless to demand it. It
is not a question of equality, but simply of the equal right to exist
and to develop the good potentialities of one's nature. A wild
man of the Bush has as much right to exist and to develop in his
way, as St. Francis of Assisi or Goethe had in theirs. And we
must respect this right equally in all cases. The murder of a
savage is as much a sin as the murder of a genius or a saint. But
this does not imply that they are, therefore, of the same value in
other respects, and must be treated equally outside the scope of
this universal human right. Material equality, and therefore
equality of rights, does not exist either between different beings
or in one and the same being whose particular and definite rights
and duties change with the changes in age and position ; they
are not the same in children and in adults, in mental disease or in
health. And yet a person's fundamental or universally human rights
and his moral value as an individual remain the same. Nor is
it destroyed by the infinite variety and inequality of separate
persons, tribes, and classes. In all these differences there must
be preserved something identical and absolute, namely, the
significance of each person as an end in himself^ that is to say,
his significance as something that cannot be merely a means for
the ends of others.

The logical demands of altruism are all-embracing, reason
shows no favours, knows no barriers ; in this respect it coincides
with the feeling upon which altruism is psychologically based.
Pity, as we have seen, is also universal and impartial, and through

76 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

it man may be 'made like to God,' for his compassion equally
embraces all, without distinction — the good and ' the enemies
of truth,' men and demons, and even call of the crawling
kind.'1

1 The question as to our moral duties to animals will be considered in a special
appendix at the end of the book, in addition to special references to it in Part II. and
Part III.

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY

I

ALTHOUGH the moral rules of justice and mercy, psychologically
based upon the feeling of pity, include in their extension the whole
realm of living creatures, their intension does not exhaust the moral
relations that hold even between human beings. Take, in the
first place, the moral relation of children — young, but already able
to understand the demands of morality — to their parents. It
undoubtedly contains a peculiar, specific element, irreducible either
to justice or to kindness and underivable from pity. A child
immediately recognises his parents' superiority over himself, his
dependence upon them ; he feels reverence for them, and there
follows from it the practical duty of obedience. All this lies
outside the boundaries of simple altruism, the logical essence of
which consists in my recognising another as my equal, as a being
like myself and in attaching the same significance to him as I do
to myself. The moral relation of children to their parents, so
far from being determined by equality, has quite the opposite
character — it is based upon the recognition of that in which the
two are unequal. And the ultimate psychological basis of the
moral relation in this case cannot be the participation in the
sufferings of others (pity), for the parents immediately appear to
the child not as needing the help of others, but as being able to
help it in its needs.

This relation is not, of course, opposed to justice, but it
contains something in addition to it. The general principle of
justice requires that our relation to others should be what we wish
their relation to be to us. It may logically include the moral

77

78 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

relation of children to parents : in loving its mother or father, the
child, of course, wants them to love it. But there is an essential
difference between these two forms of love — that which the child
feels for its parents, and that which it wants them to feel for it — and
the difference does not spring From the general principle itself.
The first relation is characterised by the feeling of admiration for
the higher and by the duty of obedience to it, while no such
reverence and submission is required by the child from the parents.
Of course, formal reflection may be pursued further, and it may
be affirmed that the children (when they reach the years of discre
tion, of course), in revering their parents and obeying them, wish
to be treated in the same way by their own children in the future.
This circumstance, however, merely establishes the abstract
relation between the general idea of justice and filial love ; it
certainly does not account for the peculiar nature of that love.
Apart from all problematic thought of future children, the moral
feeling of a real child to its parents has a sufficient bash in the
actual relationship between this child and its parents — namely, in
its entire dependence upon them as its Providence. This fact
inevitably involves the admission of their essential superiority, and
from it logically follows the duty of obedience. Thus filial love
acquires quite a peculiar character of respect or reverence (pietas
erga parentes\ which carries it beyond the general limits of simple
altruism.

It may be observed that parental (especially maternal) love, or
pity, which is the first and the most fundamental expression of the
altruistic attitude, presupposes the same inequality, but in the
opposite direction. Here, however, the inequality is not essential.
When parents pity their helpless children and take care of them,
they know from their own experience the pain of hunger, cold, etc.,
which rouse their pity, so that this is really a case of comparing
or equalising the states of another person with one's own states of
the same kind. A child, on the contrary, has never experienced
for itself the advantages of mature age, which call forth in it a
feeling of respect or reverence for its parents, and make it see
higher beings in them. Parents pity their children because of their
likeness to themselves, because of their being the same, though, as
a matter of fact, unequal. Inequality, in this case, is purely
accidental. But the specific feeling of children to their parents

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 79

is essentially determined by the superiority of the latter, and is
therefore directly based upon inequality.

If one carefully observes a child who tries to defend its mother
from an actual or imaginary insult, it will be easily seen that its
dominant feelings are anger and indignation at the blasphemer.
It is not so much sorry for the offended as angry with the offender.
The child's feelings are essentially similar to those that animate
the crowd defending its idol. " Great is Diana of the Ephesians !
death to the ungodly ! "

All manifestations of pity and of altruism that follow from it
are essentially conditioned by equality. Inequality is merely an
accidental and transitory element in them. In pitying another,
I assimilate myself to him, imagine myself in his place, get, so to
speak, into his skin— and this in itself presupposes my equality
with him as a fellow-creature. In recognising another as equal
to himself, the person who experiences pity, compares the state of
that other to similar states of himself, and from the likeness between
them deduces the moral duty of sympathy and help.

Non ignara mali miseris succurrere discord To pity another,
I must compare myself to him or him to me. The assumption
of essential inequality or heterogeneity, excluding as it does the
thought of similar states, destroys the very root of pity and of all
altruistic relation. c The twice born ' Hindu is pitiless to the
Sudras and Pariahs. His relation to them is based on inequality,
i.e. precisely on the impossibility of comparing himself with them.
He cannot put himself in their place, assimilate their states to his,
and cannot, therefore, sympathise with them. In this case, just
as in the case of the white planters' attitude to the negroes, or of
our old serf-owners to 'the brood of Ham,' it was sought to
justify the cruel relation which existed as a fact by the conception
of a fundamental inequality or heterogeneity.

Such recognition of inequality is purely negative ; it severs the
bond of union between beings and generates or justifies all kinds
of immoral relations. A different character attaches to that
positive inequality which we find in filial love or piety. The
inequality between a Brahmin and a Pariah, or between a planter
and a negro, destroys the unity of feeling and of interests between

1 'Having known trouble myself, I learn to help those who suffer' (the words of
Dido in Virgil's Aeneid).

8o THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

them ; but the superiority of the parents over the children is, on
the contrary, the condition of their unity and the basis of a
particular kind of moral relation. This is the natural root of
religious morality^ which forms a distinct and important part in the
spiritual life of man, independently of all particular religions and
systems of metaphysics.

II

Since the appearance of De Brosses's book in the last century
the theory of the ' gods-fetishes ' began to gain ground, and of
late has become extremely popular under the influence of Auguste
Comte's positive philosophy. According to this view, the primitive
form of religion is fetishism, i.e. the deification of material objects,
partly natural (stones, trees) and partly artificial, which have
accidentally drawn attention to themselves or have been arbitrarily
chosen. The beginnings or the remains of such a material cult
are undoubtedly found in all religions ; but to regard fetishism as
the fundamental and primitive religion of humanity is contrary
both to the evidence of history and sociology and to the demands
of logic. (Fetishism may, however, have a deeper meaning, as the
founder of positivism himself began to suspect in the second half
of his career.)

In order to recognise a stone, a bit of tree, or a shell as a god,
i.e. as a being of superior power and importance, one must already
possess the idea of a higher being. I could not mistake a rope for
a snake did I not already possess the idea of the snake. But what
could the idea of the deity be derived from ? The material objects
which are made into fetishes and idols have in themselves, in their
actual sensuous reality, no attributes of a higher being. The idea,
therefore, cannot be derived from them. To call it innate is not
to give an answer to the question. All that takes place in man is
in a sense innate in him. There is no doubt that man is by nature
capable of forming an idea of a higher being, for otherwise he
would not have formed it. The question is asked not about the
existence of this capacity but about its original application^ which
must have some immediate sufficient reason. In order to pass into
actual consciousness every idea, even when potentially present in
the human intellect, and in this sense innate, requires that certain

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 81

sensuous impressions or perceptions should call it forth and give
it a living concrete form, which subsequently undergoes a further
process of intellectual modification, and is made wider and deeper,
more complex and more exact. But the actual impressions from
a chunk of wood or a rudely fashioned figure are not a sufficient
ground for calling forth for the first time in the mind the idea of
a higher being, or for helping to fashion that idea. More suitable
in this respect are the impressions from the sun and the moon,
the starry heaven, thunderstorm, sea, rivers, etc. But long before
the mind becomes capable of dwelling on these events and of
judging their significance, it has been given impressions of another
kind — more familiar and more powerful— for generating in it the
idea of a higher being. When dealing with the origin of some
fundamental idea in human consciousness, we must think of the
child and not of the adult. Now it is perfectly certain that the
child is far more conscious of its dependence upon its mother, who
feeds and takes care of it (and later on, on its father), than of its de
pendence upon the sun, the thunderstorm, or the river that irrigates
the fields of its native land. The impressions it has from the first
of its parents contain sufficient ground for evoking in it the idea
of a higher being as well as the feelings of reverential love and
fear of an immeasurable power. These feelings are associated
with the idea of a higher being and form the basis of the religious
attitude. It is an unquestionable fact, and a perfectly natural one,
that until they reach a certain age children pay no attention at all
to the most important natural phenomena. The sun appears no
more remarkable to them than a simple lamp, and the thunder
produces no more impression upon them than the rattle of crockery.
In my own case the first impression of the starry sky that I
remember refers to my sixth year, and even then it was due to a
special reason (the comet of 1859), while the series of clear and
connected family memories begins in my fourth year. Neither in
life nor in literature have I seen any indications to the reverse
order of development in children ; and if we saw a baby of three
years old suddenly develop an interest in astronomical phenomena,
I think we should feel distinctly alarmed.

Not in accidental fetishes and hand-made idols, not in majestic
or terrible phenomena of nature, but in the living image of parents
is the idea of Godhead for the first time embodied for humanity

G

82 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

in its childhood. For this reason the moral element — contrary to
current opinion — has from the first an important though not an
exclusive significance for religion. According to the elementary
conception of it the deity has pre-eminently the character of
Providence.

At first Providence is embodied in the mother. At the lower
stages of social development, so long as the marriage relation is
not yet organised, the importance of the mother and the cult of
motherhood predominate. Different peoples, like individual men,
have lived through an epoch of matriarchy or mother- right, the traces
of which are still preserved in history, in ancient customs, and also
in the present life of certain savages.1 But when the patriarchal
type of family comes to be established, the mother retains the part
of Providence only while the children are materially dependent
upon her for food and their first education. At that period the
mother is the only higher being for the child ; but as he reaches
the age of reflection he sees that his mother is herself dependent
upon another higher being — his father, who provides food for and
protects all his family j he is the true Providence, and the religious
worship is naturally transferred to him.

Ill

The religious attitude of children to their parents as to their
living Providence, arising naturally in primitive humanity, ex
presses itself most clearly and fully when the children are grown
up and the parents are dead. Worship of dead fathers and ancestors
unquestionably occupies the foremost place in the development of
the religious, moral, and social relations of humanity. The immense
population of China still lives by the religion of ancestor- worship,
upon which all the social, political, and family structure of the
Middle Kingdom is founded. And among other peoples of the
globe — savage, barbarous, or civilised, including modern Parisians —
there is not one which does not do homage to the memoryof the dead
in one form or another. The relation to living parents, although it
is the first basis of religion, cannot have a purely religious character

1 There is a special literature on the subject which first arose in connection with
classical archeology (Bahofen. Das Mutttrrechi), and subsequently passed into the
domain of comparative ethnography and sociology.

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 83

owing to the intimacy and constant interaction in everyday life.
As a child grows up he hears from his father about his ancestors
who died and are the object of an already established religious
cult ; thus the religion of parents who are still living is naturally
merged into the religion of parents who have gone, and who, clothed
in mysterious majesty, are raised above all that surrounds us. The
father in his lifetime is merely a candidate for deity, and is only
the mediator and the priest of the real god — the dead ancestor.
// is not fear but death that gives humanity its first gods. The
feeling of dependence and the conception of Providence, trans
ferred from the mother to the father, become associated with the
idea of the forefathers when the child learns that the parents upon
whom he depends are in a far greater dependence upon the dead,
whose power is not limited by any conditions of the material
and corporeal existence. The idea of Providence and the moral
duties of respect, service, and obedience that follow from it for
man are thus transferred to them. To obey the will of the
dead, one must know it. Sometimes they announce it directly,
appearing in a vision or a dream ; in other cases it must be learnt
through divination. The mediators between this higher divine
power and ordinary men are, first, the living fathers or the elders
of the tribe, but afterwards, as the social relations become more
complex, there arises a separate class of priests, diviners, sorcerers,
and prophets.

It is only a subjective misanthropic mood that can reduce
filial sentiments even in the primitive races to fear alone, to the
exclusion of gratitude and of a disinterested recognition of
superiority. If these moral elements are unquestionably present
in the relation of a dog to its master in whom it sees its living
Providence, they must a fortiori form part of the feelings of man
to his Providence, originally embodied for him in his parents.
When this interpretation is transferred to the dead ancestors, their
cult also carries with it the moral element of filial love, which
is in this case clearly differentiated from simple altruism and
acquires a predominantly religious character.

According to a well-known theory, whose chief representative
is Herbert Spencer, the whole of religion can be traced to ancestor-
worship. Although this view does not express the complete truth,
it is far more correct and suggestive than the theory of primitive

84 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

fetishism or the theories which reduce all religion to the deification
of the sun, the thunder, and other natural phenomena. The
objects of religious worship were always active beings or spirits in
the likeness of man. There can hardly be a doubt that the
prototype of spirits were the souls of the departed ancestors. In
Lithuania and Poland the general name for all spirits is forefathers
— dzlady ; with us the elementary spirits are spoken of as
grandfather water- sprite, grandfather of the forest, the master
house-spirit. Ovid's Metamorphoses, chiefly borrowed from the
popular beliefs of the Greeks and Romans, are full of stories
of the dead or dying men passing into the elementary, the
zoomorphic, and the phytomorphic (vegetative) deities and spirits.
The most widespread form of fetishism — the stone worship — is
undoubtedly connected with the cult of the dead. Among the
Laps, Buriates, and other peoples, the names of the ancestors or the
sorcerers who were transformed into the sacred stones are re
membered after death.1 This transformation cannot be understood
in the sense that the spirit of the dead becomes a stone, i.e. a soulless
thing ; on the contrary, it retains the power that it had in its life
time, and is indeed more powerful than it was then. Thus among
the Laps the petrified sorcerers foretell and cause storms and bad
weather in all the neighbourhood. The stone in this case is merely
the visible abode of the spirit, the instrument of its action. Among
the Semites sacred stones were called beth-el, that is, c house of god.'
The same thing must be said about sacred trees.

It is a well-known fact that among the Africans and other
peoples the sorcerers are supposed to have for their chief character
istic the power of controlling atmospheric events, of producing
good and bad weather. This power is ascribed in a still greater
degree and more directly to the spirits of the dead sorcerers, whose
living successors serve merely as their mediators and messengers.
Now such a powerful spirit of a dead sorcerer, who produces
at his will thunder and storm, differs in no way from a thunder
god. There is no rational necessity to seek for a different
explanation of father Zeus or of grandfather Percunas.

It is not my object here to expound and explain the history
of religious development, and I will not attempt to solve the

1 See, among other things, Harusin's book on Laplanders, and my article Ostatki
peri'obitnago yaxitchestva (The Remains of Primitive Paganism).

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 85

question as to how far a genetic tie may be established between
the cult of the dead and the solar, lunar, and stellar mythology. I
will only mention some suggestive facts. In Egypt the solar deity
Osiris reigned over the unseen world of the dead. In classical
mythology Hecate was one of the deities of Hades. According to
an ancient belief preserved in Manicheism the moon is an inter
mediate resting-place for the souls of the departed. I would also
like to observe that the end of the theogonic process is true to its
beginning — that the religious consciousness at its highest stage
merely deepens and widens the content we find at the primitive
stages. The religion of a primitive human family centres round
the idea of the father or the nearest ancestor, first as living, then
as dead. Their own particular parent is the highest principle for
the family, the source of its life and welfare, the object of respect,
gratitude, and obedience — in a word, its Providence. Through a
natural historical process there arise the communal and the tribal
gods, until at last the religious consciousness of humanity, united
in thought if not in fact, rises to the idea of the universal
Heavenly Father with His all-embracing Providence.

IV

The development of a religious idea involves a change in its
extension, and also in the nature of the intellectual concepts and
practical rules contained in it. But it does not affect the moral
content of religion, i.e. man's fundamental relation to what he
admits as higher than himself — to what he recognises as his
Providence. That relation remains unchanged in all the forms and
at all the stages of religious development. The ideas of the child
about its parents, of the members of a tribe about the spirit of their
first ancestor, the ideas of entire peoples about their national
gods, and finally, the general human idea of the one all-good
Father of all that is, differ essentially from one another, and
there is also great difference in the forms of worship. The real
tie between father and children needs no special institutions and
no mediation ; but the relation with the invisible spirit of the
ancestor must be maintained by special means. The spirit cannot
partake of ordinary human food. It feeds on the evaporation of
blood, and has therefore to be fed by sacrifices. Family sacrifices

86 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

to the spirit of the tribe naturally differ from communal sacrifices
to the national gods ; the ' god of war ' has greater and different
requirements than the patron-spirit of the home, and the all-
embracing and all-pervading Father of the universe requires no
material sacrifices at all, but only worship in spirit and in truth.
But in spite of all these differences, the filial relation to the higher
being remains essentially the same at all these different stages.
The crudest cannibal and the most perfect saint in so far as they are
religious agree in that they both equally desire to do not their own
will but the will of the Father. This permanent and self-identical
filial relation to the higher (whatever this higher may be supposed
to be) forms that principle of true pietism which connects religion
with morality, and may equally well be described as the religious
element in morality or the moral element in religion.1

Can this principle be affirmed as a generally binding moral
rule, side by side with the principles of asceticism and altruism ?
Apparently the filial relation to the supreme will depends upon
the faith in that will, and one cannot require such faith from those
who have not got it ; when there is nothing to be had, it is no
use making demands. But there is a misunderstanding here.
The recognition of what is higher than us is independent of any
definite intellectual ideas,- and therefore of any positive beliefs,
and in its general character it is undoubtedly binding upon every
moral and rational being. Every such being, in trying to
attain the purpose of its life, is necessarily convinced that the
attainment of it, or the final satisfaction of will, is beyond the
power of man — that is, every rational being comes to recognise
its dependence upon something invisible • and unknown. Such
dependence cannot be denied. The only question is whether
that upon which I am dependent has a meaning. If it has not,
my existence, dependent upon what is meaningless, is meaningless
also. In that case there is no point in speaking of any rational
and moral principles and purposes. They can only have
significance on condition that there is a meaning in my exist
ence, that the world is a rational system, that meaning

1 I am speaking here of pietism in the direct and general sense of the term as
designating the feeling of piety (pittas) raised to the rank of a moral principle. Usually
the term ' pietism ' in a special historical sense is applied to a certain religious movement
among the Protestants.

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 87

predominates over what is meaningless in the universe. If there
is no rational purpose in the world as a whole, there cannot be
any in that part of it which is composed of human actions
determined by moral rules. But in that case these rules too
fall to the ground, for they do not lead to anything and cannot
in any way be justified. If my higher spiritual nature is merely
an accident, ascetic struggle with the flesh may destroy my
spiritual being instead of strengthening it ; and in that case
why should I observe the rules of abstinence and deprive myself
of real pleasures for the sake of an empty dream ? In the same
way, if there is no rational and moral order in the universe, and
our work for the benefit of our neighbours may bring them
harm instead of the intended help, the moral principle of
altruism is destroyed by inner self-contradiction. If, for instance,
I suppose, with Schopenhauer, that the ultimate reality is blind
and senseless Will, and that all existence is essentially pain, why
should I try and help others to support their existence ? On
such a supposition it would be far more logical to use every
effort to put to death the largest possible number of living
creatures.

I can do good consciously and rationally only if I believe
in the good and in its objective independent significance in the
world, i.e. in other words, if I believe in the moral order, in
Providence, in God. This faith is logically prior to all particular
religious beliefs and institutions, as well as to all systems of
metaphysics, and in this sense it forms the so-called natural
religion.

The natural religion gives rational sanction to all the
demands of morality. Suppose reason directly tells us that it is
good to subordinate the flesh to the spirit, that it is good to help
others and to recognise the rights of other people like our own.
Now in order to obey these demands of reason, one must believe
in reason — believe that the good it requires from us is not a
subjective illusion, but has real grounds and expresses the
truth, and that that truth £ is great and overcomes.' Not to
have this faith is to disbelieve that one's own existence has a
meaning — is to renounce the dignity of a rational being.

88 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

The absence of a natural religion is often fictitious. A
negative relation to this or that form or degree of religious
consciousness, predominant at a given time and at a given place,
is easily taken for denial of religion as such. Thus the Pagans
of the Roman Empire thought the Christians godless (a&oi),
and from their point of view they were right, for the Christians
did reject all their gods. Apart from this, however, there exist
cases of real godlessness or unbelief, i.e. of denying on principle
anything higher than oneself — of denying good, reason, truth.
But the fact of such denial, which coincides with the denial of
morality in general, can be no more an argument against the
generally binding character of the religiously-moral principle
than the existence of shameless and carnal, or of pitiless and cruel
men is an argument against the moral duty of abstinence and
charity.

Religious morality, as all morality in general, is not a
confirmation of everything that is, but an affirmation of the one
thing that ought to be. Independently of all positive beliefs or
of any unbelief, every man as a rational being must admit that
the life of the world as a whole and his own life in particular has
a meaning^ and that therefore everything depends upon a supreme
rational principle, in virtue of which this meaning is preserved
and realised. And in admitting this, he must put himself into
a filial position in relation to the supreme principle of life, that
is, gratefully surrender himself to its providence, and submit all
his actions to the 'will of the Father,' which speaks through
reason and conscience.

Just as the intellectual ideas about the parents and the
external practical relations to them alter according to the age of
the children, while the filial love must remain unchanged, so
the theological conceptions and the forms of worship of the
Heavenly Father assume many forms and undergo many changes
with the spiritual growth of humanity ; but the religiously-moral
attitude of free subordination of one's will to the demands of
a higher principle must always and everywhere remain the
same.

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY

VI

Speaking generally, in morality the higher demands do not
cancel the lower, but presuppose and include them. This might
seem to be a matter of course ; and yet many have failed, and
still fail, to understand this simple and obvious truth. Thus,
according to the teaching of some Christian sects, both ancient
and modern, the higher rule of celibacy cancels the seventh
commandment as inferior, and therefore, in rejecting marriage,
these sectarians readily allow all kinds of fornication. It is
obvious that they are in error. Similarly, it is thought by
many that the higher rule of pitying all living creatures absolves
them from the lower duty of pitying their family and relatives,
although, one would think, there could be no doubt about the
latter also belonging to the class of living creatures.

Still more often such mistakes are made in the domain of
religious morality. The higher stages of spiritual consciousness
once reached, subordinate to themselves and consequently change,
but by no means cancel, the demands which had force on the
lower stages. A man who has a conception of the Heavenly
Father cannot, of course, regard his earthly father in the same
way as does a babe for whom the latter is the only higher being ;
but it does not follow that the first and the second command
ments cancel the fifth. We cannot now render our dead
ancestors the religious worship which they had in the patriarchal
times ; but this does not mean that we have no duties to the
departed. We may well be conscious of our dependence upon
the One Father of the universe, but this dependence is not
immediate ; our existence is, without a doubt, closely determined
by heredity and environment. Heredity means the forefathers,
and it is by them that our environment has been made. The
supreme Will has determined our existence through our ancestors,
and, bowing down before Its action, we cannot be indifferent to
Its instruments. I know that if I were born among cannibals
I should be a cannibal myself, and I cannot help feeling gratitude
and reverence to men who by their labour and exploits have
raised my people from the savage state and brought them to the
level of culture upon which they are standing now. This has been

90 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

done by Providence through men who have been specially called
and who cannot be separated from their providential work. If
I praise and value the fact that it has been given to my native
land, with which my existence is so closely interwoven, to be a
Christian and a European country, I am bound to hold in pious
remembrance the Kiev prince who christened Russia, and that
northern giant who with powerful blows shattered the Muscovo-
Mongolian exclusiveness and brought Russia within the circle
of educated nations, as well as all those men who in the different
spheres of life moved us forward along the path opened by
those two historical forefathers of Russia. It is sometimes
maintained that individuals count for nothing in history, and
that what has been done by certain men would have been done
just as well by others. Speaking in the abstract, we might
of course have been born of other parents and not of our actual
father and mother ; but this idle thought about possible parents
does not cancel our duties to the actual ones.

The providential men who gave us a share in the higher
religion and in human enlightenment did not themselves create
these in the first instance. What they gave us they had them
selves received from the geniuses, heroes, and saints of the
former ages, and our grateful memory must include them too.
We must reconstruct as completely as possible the whole line
of our spiritual ancestors — men through whom Providence has
led humanity on the path to perfection. The pious memory of our
ancestors compels us to do service to them actively. The nature
of that service is conditioned .by the ultimate character of the
world as a whole, and cannot be understood apart from theoretical
philosophy and aesthetics. Here one can only point to the
moral principle involved, namely, the pious and grateful reverence
due to the forefathers.

Such a cult of human ancestors in spirit and in truth does not
belittle the religion of the one Heavenly Father. On the
contrary, it makes it definite and real. It is what He put into
these * chosen vessels ' that we revere in them ; in these visible
images of the unseen, the Deity Itself is revealed and glorified.
A person in whose mind the concrete images of providential
action incarnate in history fail to evoke gratitude, reverence,
and homage will be still less likely to respond to the pure idea of

THE RELIGIOUS PRINCIPLE IN MORALITY 91

Providence. A truly religious attitude to the higher is impossible
for one who has never experienced the feelings to which the
poet gives expression :

When, in the drunkenness of crime,

The crowd goes forth in violent rage,

And evil genius through the mire

Drags name of prophet and of sage,

My knees are bent in one desire,

My head is bowed towards the page

Where clear and open for all time

They wrote the message for their age.

I call up their majestic shades

In the dim church where tumult fades,

In clouds of incense learn and glean,

And forgetting the mob and its vulgar noise,

I give my ears to the noble voice

And take full breath of all they mean.

CHAPTER V

VIRTUES
I

EACH of the moral foundations I have laid down — shame, pity, and
the religious feeling — may be considered from three points of
view : as a virtue, as a rule of action, and as the condition of a
certain good.

Thus, in relation to shame, we distinguish, first of all, persons
modest or shameless by nature, approving of the former and con
demning the latter ; modesty^ therefore, is recognised as a good
natural quality or as a virtue. But by that very fact it is
abstracted from particular cases and is made the norm or the
general rule of action (and, through this, a basis for passing
judgment on actions) independently of the presence or absence
of this virtue in this or in that individual. If modesty is not
sometimes good and sometimes bad (in the way in which a loud
voice is good at a public meeting and bad in the room of a
sleeping invalid) ; if modesty is a good in itself, reason requires
us in all cases to act in accordance with it, namely, to abstain
from actions that are shameful — i.e. that express the predominance
of the lower nature over the higher — and to practise actions of
the opposite character. Behaviour in conformity with this rule
leads in the end to permanent self-control, to freedom of the
spirit, and its power over the material existence ; that is, it leads
to a state which affords us a certain higher satisfaction and is a
moral good.

In the same way, the capacity for feeling pity or compassion
(in opposition to selfishness, cruelty, and malice) is, in the first
place, a good personal quality or virtue. In so far as it is

92

VIRTUES 93

recognised as such, or is approved, it provides the norm for
altruistic actions in accordance with the rules of justice and
mercy. And such activity leads to the moral good of true com
munity or oneness with other men, and, finally, with all living
creatures.

In a similar manner, a grateful recognition of that which is
higher than us, and upon which we depend, is the natural founda
tion of the virtue of piety, and at the same time provides a
rational rule of religious conduct. It also leads to the moral
good of unity with the first causes and bearers of existence :
with our forefathers, with the departed in general, and with the
whole of the invisible world which conditions our life from this
point of view.

Since there is an indissoluble inner connection between any
given virtue, the rules of action corresponding to it, and the
moral good ensuing therefrom, there is no need, in inquiring
into the subject more closely, to adopt every time all the three
points of view. It will be sufficient to take one only, viz. the
point of view of virtue, for it logically contains the other two,
and no sharp line of demarcation can be drawn between them.
It would be impossible to deny that the man who invariably acted
in accordance with the rules of virtue was virtuous, even though
he happened to possess but a small degree of the corresponding
natural faculty, or was noted, indeed, by the presence of the
opposite characteristic. On the other hand, that which, in
contradistinction to virtue, I call a moral good, is also a virtue,
though not as originally given but as acquired — it is the norm of
activity which has become second nature.

II

A virtuous man is man as he ought to be. In other words,
virtue is man's normal or due relation to everything (for unrelated
qualities or properties are unthinkable). The due relation does
not mean the same relation. In drawing the distinction between
the self and the not self, we necessarily posit or determine the
not self in three ways : either as the lower (by nature), or as
similar to us (of the same kind), or as higher than we. It is
obvious that there cannot be a fourth alternative. Hence it

94 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

logically follows that the right or the moral relation must have a
threefold character. It is clear that we ought not to regard the
lower (say, an inclination of the material nature) as if it were
the higher (e.g. a decree of the divine will) ; it would be
equally opposed to what is right to regard a being like
ourselves — say, a human being — either as lower than we (i.e.
regard it as a soulless thing), or as higher (look upon it as a
deity).

Thus, instead of one, we have three right or moral relations,
or three kinds of virtue, corresponding to the three divisions into
which the totality of objects correlated with us necessarily falls.
I say necessarily^ because man finds himself to be neither the
absolutely supreme or highest being, nor the absolutely sub
ordinate or lowest, nor, finally, alone of his kind. He is conscious
of himself as an intermediate being and, moreover, one of the many
intermediate. The direct logical consequence of this fact is the
threefold character of his moral relations. In virtue of it, one
and the same quality or action may have quite a different and
even opposite significance, according to the kind of object to
which it refers. Thus, belittling oneself or recognising one's
worthlessness is called humility^ and is a virtue when it refers to
objects of superior dignity ; but in relation to unworthy objects
it is considered base and is immoral.1 In the same way, enthusiasm^
when roused by high principles and ideals, is no doubt a virtue ;
in relation to indifferent objects it is an amusing weakness ; and
directed upon objects of the lower order it becomes a shameful
mania. Virtues in the proper sense are always and in every one
the same, for they express a quality determined in the right way,
and correspond to the very meaning of one or other of the three
possible spheres of relation. But from these definite and deter
mining virtues must be distinguished qualities of will and ways of
action which are not in themselves morally determined, and do
not permanently correspond to a definite sphere of duty. These
may sometimes be virtues, sometimes indifferent states, and some
times even vices ; but the change in the moral significance is

1 In English the word humility has possibly a less conditional sense, as a state of
mind or an attitude towards life. From a Christian point of view one can never be
too humble. Though of course there is ' the pride that apes humility ' and the
condition of mind of Uriah Heep (Ec.).

VIRTUES 95

not always accompanied by a corresponding change in the name
of the psychological quality in question.

It is clear, then, that even if we did not find in our psychical
experience the three fundamental moral feelings of shame, pity,
and reverence, it would be necessary on logical grounds alone to
divide the totality of moral relations into three parts, or to
accept three fundamental types of virtue, expressing man's relation
to what is lower than himself, to what is like him, and to what is
above him.

Ill

If in addition to the foundations of morality recognised by us
— shame, pity, and reverence for the higher — we go over all
the other qualities which have, in ancient and modern times, been
considered as virtues, not a single one of them will be found to
deserve that name of itself. Each of these various qualities can
only be regarded as a virtue when it accords with the objective
norms of right, expressed in the three fundamental moral data
indicated above. Thus abstinence or temperance has the dignity
of virtue only when it refers to shameful states or actions. Virtue
does not require that we should be abstinent or temperate in
general or in everything, but only that we should abstain from
that which is below our human dignity, and from the things in
which it would be a shame to indulge ourselves unchecked.
But if a person is moderate in seeking after truth, or abstains
from goodwill to his neighbours, no one would consider or
call him virtuous on that account ; he would, on the contrary,
be condemned as lacking in generous impulses. It follows from
this that temperance is not in itself or essentially a virtue,
but becomes or does not become one according to its right or
wrong application to objects. In the same way, courage or
fortitude is only a virtue in so far as it expresses the right
relation of the rational human being to his lower material
nature, the relation, namely, of mastery and power, the
supremacy of the spirit over the animal instinct of self-
preservation.1 Praiseworthy courage is shown by the man who
does not tremble at accidental misfortunes, who keeps his self-

1 Concerning this virtue, see above, Chap. I. p. 36.

96 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

control in the midst of external dangers, and bravely risks his life
and material goods for the sake of things that are higher and
more worthy. But the bravest unruliness, the most daring
aggressiveness, and the most fearless blaspheming are not praised
as virtues ; nor is the horror of sin or the fear of God reckoned
as shameful cowardice. In this case then, again, the quality of
being virtuous or vicious depends upon a certain relation to the
object and not on the psychological nature of the emotional and
volitional states.

The third of the so-called cardinal virtues,1 wisdom^ i.e. the
knowledge of the best ways and means for attaining the purpose
before us, and the capacity to apply these means aright, owes its
significance as a virtue not to this formal capacity for the most
expedient action as such, but necessarily depends upon the moral
worth of the purpose itself. Wisdom as a virtue is the faculty of
attaining the best purposes in the best possible way, or the know
ledge of applying in the most expedient way one's intellectual
forces to objects of the greatest worth. There may be wisdom
apart from this condition, but such wisdom would not be a virtue.
The Biblical 'serpent ' had certainly justified its reputation as the
wisest of earthly creatures by the understanding he showed of
human nature, and the skill with which he used this understand
ing for the attainment of his purpose. Since however the purpose
was an evil one, the serpent's admirable wisdom was not recog
nised as a virtue, but was cursed as the source of evil ; and the
wisest creature has remained the symbol of an immoral creeping
mind, absorbed in what is low and unworthy. Even in everyday
life we do not recognise as virtue that worldly wisdom which
goes no further than understanding human weaknesses and arrang
ing its own affairs in accordance with selfish ends.

The conception of justice (the fourth cardinal virtue) has four
different meanings. In the widest sense 'just' is synonymous
with due, correct, normal, or generally right — not only in the
moral sphere (with regard to will and action) but also in the in
tellectual (with regard to knowledge and thinking) ; for instance,

1 From the early days of the scholastics the name of cardinal or philosophic virtues
(in contradistinction to the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity) has been
reserved to the four virtues which Plato defined in the Republic, namely, temperance,
courage, wisdom, and justice. I take the names of these four virtues in their general
sense, independently of the meaning they may bear in Plato's philosophy.

VIRTUES 97

4 you reason justly ' or i cette solution (d*un probleme mathlmatique ou
rne'taphysique) est juste.1 Taken in this sense the conception of
justice, approaching that of truth, is wider than the conception of
virtue and belongs to the theoretical rather than to the moral
philosophy. In the second, more definite sense, justice {at quit as)
corresponds to the fundamental principle of altruism, which
requires that we should recognise everybody's equal right to life
and well-being which each recognises for himself. In this
sense justice is not special virtue, but merely a logical objective
expression of the moral principle, which finds its subjective
psychological expression in the fundamental feeling of pity (com
passion or sympathy). The idea of justice is used in the third
sense when a distinction is made between degrees of altruism (or
of moral relation to our fellow-creatures) and when the first,
negative stage ('not to injure anyone') is described as justice
proper (justitia\ while the second, positive stage (cto help every
one') is designated as charity (caritas, charitl]. As already
pointed out (in Chapter III.) this distinction is purely relative,
and is certainly insufficient for making justice into a special
virtue. No one would call just a man who decidedly refused to
help any one or to alleviate anybody's suffering, even though he
did not injure his neighbours by direct acts of violence. The
moral motive both for abstaining from inflicting injury and for
rendering help, is one and the same — namely, a recognition of
the right of others to live and to enjoy life. No moral motive
could be found to make any one halt half-way and be content with
the negative side of the moral demand. It is clear, then, that
such pause or such limitation cannot possibly correspond to any
special virtue, and merely expresses a lesser degree of the general
altruistic virtue — the sympathetic feeling. And there is no
universally binding or constant measure for the lesser and the
greater, so that each case must be judged upon its own merits.
When moral consciousness in the community reaches a certain
level of development, the refusal to help even a stranger or an
enemy is condemned by the conscience as a direct wrong.
This is perfectly logical, for if, speaking generally, I ought to help
my neighbour, I wrong him by not helping him. Even on the
lower stages of moral consciousness a refusal to help is, within
certain limits, regarded as a wrong and a crime — for instance

H

98 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

within the limits of the family, the tribe, the army. Among
barbarous people everything is permissible so far as enemies are
concerned, so that the idea of wrong does not even apply with
respect to them ; but a peaceful traveller or guest has a right to
the most active help and generous gifts. If, however, justice
demands charity and mercy (among the barbarians in relation to
some men only, and with the progress of morality, in relation to
all) it clearly cannot be a virtue by itself, distinct from charity.
It is simply an expression of the general moral principle of
altruism which has different degrees and forms of application, but
always contains an idea of justice.

Finally, there is a fourth sense in which the term may be used.
On the supposition that the objective expression of what is right is
to be found in laws (the laws of the state or of the Church), it
may be maintained that an unswerving obedience to laws is an
absolute moral duty, and that a corresponding disposition to be
strictly law-abiding is a virtue identical with that of justice.
This view is only valid within the limits of the supposition on
which it is based — that is, it is wholly applicable to laws that
proceed from the Divine perfection, and therefore express the
supreme truth, but is applicable to other laws only on condition
that they agree with that truth ; for one ought to obey God more
than men. Justice in this sense, then — that is, the striving to be
law-abiding — is not in itself a virtue ; it may or may not be that,
according to the nature and the origin of the laws that claim
obedience. For the source of human laws is a turbid source.
The limpid stream of moral truth is hardly visible in it under the
layer of other, purely historical elements, which express merely the
actual correlation of forces and interests at this or that moment of
time. Consequently justice as a virtue by no means always coin
cides with legality or judicial right, and is sometimes directly
opposed to it, as the jurists themselves admit : summum jus —
summa injuria. But while fully admitting the difference and the
possible conflict between the inner truth and the law, many
people think that such conflicts should always be settled in favour
of legality. They maintain, that is, that justice requires us in all
cases to obey the law, even if the law be unjust. In support of
their view they quote the authority and the example of a righteous
man of antiquity, Socrates, who thought it wrong to run away

VIRTUES 99

from the lawful, though unjust, sentence of the Athenian judges
against him. But in truth this famous example teaches something
very different.

So far as we know from Xenophon and Plato, Socrates was
led to his decision by two different motives. In the first place, he
thought that to save by flight the small remainder of life to which
he, an old man of seventy, could look forward, would be shameful
and cowardly, especially for him, who believed in the immortality
of the soul, and taught that true wisdom was continual dying (to
the material world). Secondly, Socrates thought that a citizen
ought to sacrifice his personal welfare to the laws of his country, even
if they were unjust, for the sake of filial piety. Socrates, then, was
guided by the moral motives of asceticism and piety, and certainly
not by the conception of the absolute value of legality, which he
never admitted. Besides, in the case of Socrates, there was no
conflict between two duties, but only a conflict between a
personal right and a civic duty^ and it may be accepted as a matter
of general principle that right must give way to duty. No one
is bound to defend his own material life : it is merely his right,
which it is always permissible, and sometimes laudable, to sacrifice.
It is a different matter when the civic duty of obedience to laws
conflicts not with a personal right, but with a moral duty, as in
the famous classical case of Antigone. She had to choose between
the moral and religious duty of giving honourable burial to her
brother, and the civic duty of obeying the prohibition to do so — a
prohibition impious and inhuman, though legally just, for it pro
ceeded from the lawful ruler of her native town. Here comes
into force the rule that one ought to obey God more than men,
and it is made abundantly clear that justice in the sense of legality,
or of external conformity of actions to established laws, is not in
itself a virtue, but may or may not be such according to circum
stances. Therefore the heroism of Socrates, who submitted to an
unjust law, and the heroism of Antigone, who violated such a law,
are equally laudable — and not only because in both cases there was
sacrifice of life, but from the nature of the case. Socrates re
nounced his own material right for the sake of the higher ideas of
human dignity and patriotic duty. Antigone defended the right
of another^ and thereby fulfilled her duty — for the burial of her
brother was his right and her duty, while it was in no sense

Socrates' duty to escape from prison. Speaking generally, pietas
erga patriam^ like pietas erga parentes^ can only compel us to
sacrifice our own right, but certainly not the right of others.
Suppose, for instance, that filial piety developed to the point of
heroism induced a man not to resist his father who intends to kill
him. The moral worth of such heroism may be disputed, but it
would certainly never even occur to any one to justify or to call
heroic that same man if, out of obedience to his father, he thought
it his duty to kill his own brother or sister. The same is appli
cable to unjust and inhuman laws, and from this it follows that
justice, in the sense of obedience to laws as such, according to the
rule ^fiat justitia, pereat mundus'* is not in itself a virtue.

IV

The three so-called theological virtues recognised in the
patristic and the scholastic ethics — -faith, hope, and charity 1 — also
have no unconditional moral worth in themselves, but are
dependent upon other circumstances. Even for theologians, not
every kind of faith is a virtue. The character of virtue does not
attach to faith which has for its object something non-existent, or
unworthy, or which unworthily regards that which is worthy.
Thus, in the first case, if a person firmly believes in the philo
sopher's stone, i.e. a powder, liquid, or gas which transforms all metals
to gold, such faith in an object which does not exist in the nature
of things, is not regarded as a virtue, but as self-deceit. In the
second case, if a person not merely admits — and rightly so — the
existence of the power of evil as a fact, but makes that power an
object of faith in the sense of confidence in and devotion to it,
forms a compact with it, sells his soul to the devil, and so on,
such faith is justly regarded as a terrible moral fall, for its object,
though actual, is evil and unworthy. Finally, in the third
case, the faith of the devils themselves, of whom the apostle writes
that they believe (in God) and tremble,2 is not recognised as a
virtue, for although it refers to an object that exists, and is of
absolute worth, it regards that object in an unworthy way (with
horror instead of joy, with repulsion instead of attraction). Only

1 According to the well-known text of St. Paul, in which, however, the term
'virtue' is not used. 2 St. James ii. 13.

VIRTUES 101

that faith in the higher being may be regarded as a virtue, which
regards it in a worthy manner, namely, with free filial piety. And
such faith entirely coincides with the religious feeling which we
found to be one of the three ultimate foundations of morality.

The second theological virtue — hope — comes really to the same
thing. There can be no question of virtue when some one trusts
in his own strength or wisdom, or indeed in God, if in the sole
expectation of material gain from Him. That hope alone is a
virtue which looks to God as the source of true blessings to come ;
and this is, again, the same fundamental religious relation, to which
is added an idea of the future and a feeling of expectation.

Finally, the moral significance of the third and greatest theo
logical virtue — love — entirely depends upon the given objective
determinations. Love in itself, or love in general, is not a virtue —
if it were, all beings would alike be virtuous, for they all without
exception love something and live by their love. But selfish love
for oneself and one's property, passionate love of drink or of
horse-racing, is not reckoned as a virtue.

4 II faut en ce has monde aimer beaucoup de chosesj teaches a neo-
pagan poet. Such 'love' had been expressly rejected by the
apostle of love :

lLove not the world, neither the things that are in the world? l
This is the first, negative part of the commandment of love,
and it should not be overlooked as it usually is. It is simply the
expression of the fundamental principle of asceticism : to guard
ourselves from the lower nature and to struggle against its
dominion. For it is clear from the context that by ' the world '
which we must not love, the apostle means neither mankind as a
whole, nor the totality of the creation which proclaims the glory
of God, but precisely the dark and irrational basis of the material
nature which ceases to be passive and potential, as it ought to be,
and unlawfully invades the domain of the human spirit. Further
on it is directly said that in the world there is the lust of the flesh, i.e.
the desire of immoderate sensuality, the lust of the eyes, i.e. greed
or love of money, and the pride of life , i.e. vainglory and ambition.
Biblical ethics adds to the negative '•love not the world"* two
positive commands : love God with all thy heart, and love thy
neighbour as thyself. These two kinds of love are rightly dis-

1 i John ii. 15.

102 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

tinguished, for the particular nature of the object necessarily con
ditions the particular moral relation to be adopted towards them.
Love to our neighbours has its source in pity, and love towards
God in reverence. To love one's neighbour as oneself really
means to feel for him as one does for oneself. Whole-hearted
love of God means entire devotion to Him, full surrender of one's
own will to His — i.e. the perfection of the filial or the religious
feeling and relation.

Thus the commandment of love is not connected with any
particular virtue, but is the culmination of all the fundamental
demands of morality in the three necessary respects : in relation to
the lower, to the higher, and to that which is on a level with us.

I have shown that the four c cardinal ' as well as the three
1 theological ' virtues can be reduced, in one way or another, to the
three ultimate foundations of morality, indicated above. It can
now be left to the goodwill and the intelligence of the reader to
continue the analysis of the other so-called virtues. There exists
no generally recognised list of them, and, by means of scholastic
distinctions, their number can be increased indefinitely. But for
the sake of completing what has gone before, I should like to say
a few words about five virtues which present a certain interest
in one respect or another, namely, concerning magnanimity,
disinterestedness, generosity, patience, and truthfulness.

We call magnanimous a man who • is ashamed, or finds it
beneath his dignity, to insist on his material rights to the detriment
of other people, or to bind his will by lower worldly interests
(such as vanity), which he therefore readily sacrifices for the sake
of higher considerations. We also call magnanimous the man
who is undisturbed by adversities and changes of fortune, because,
again, he is ashamed of allowing his peace of mind to be dependent
upon material and accidental things. The words italicised are
sufficient to indicate that this virtue is simply a special expression
or form of the first root of morality — viz. of the self-assertion of the
human spirit against the lower, material side of our being. The
essential thing here is the feeling of human dignity, which, in the
first instance, manifests itself in the feeling of shame.

VIRTUES 103

Disinterestedness is the freedom of the spirit from attachment
to a certain kind of material goods, namely, to possessions. It is
clearly a particular expression of that same feeling of human
dignity. In a corresponding manner, vices opposed to this viitue
— miserliness and cupidity — are felt to be shameful.

Generosity in its external manifestations coincides with
magnanimity and disinterestedness, but it has a different inner
basis, namely, an altruistic one. A virtuously generous man
is one who shares his property with others out of justice or bene
volence (for in so far as he does it out of vanity or pride, he is not
virtuous). But at the same time such a man may be attached
to the property he gives away to the degree of miserliness, and in
that case he cannot, in strictness, be called disinterested. It must
only be said that the altruistic virtue of generosity overcomes in
him the vice of cupidity.

Patience (as a virtue) is only the passive aspect of that quality
of the soul which, in its active manifestation, is called magna
nimity or spiritual fortitude. The difference is almost entirely
subjective, and no hard and fast line can be drawn between the
two. A man who calmly endures torment or misfortune will
be called magnanimous by some, patient by others, courageous
by the third, while the fourth will see in him an example of
a special virtue — serenity (arapa^ia) and so on. The discussion
of the comparative appropriateness of these definitions can have
only a linguistic and not an ethical interest. On the other
hand, the identity of the external expression may (as in the case
of generosity) conceal important differences in the moral content.
A man may patiently endure physical or mental suffering owing
to a low degree of nervous sensitiveness, dullness of mind and
an apathetic temperament, and in that case patience is not a
virtue at all. Or patience may be due to the inner force of the
spirit, which does not give way to external influences — and then it
is an ascetic virtue (reducible to our first basis of morality) ;
or it may arise from meekness and love of one's neighbours
(caritas\ which does not wish to pay back evil for evil and
injury for injury — and in that case it is an altruistic virtue (re
ducible to the second principle — pity, which here extends even
to enemies who inflict the injury). Finally, patience may
spring from obedience to the higher will upon which all that

104 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

happens depends — and then it is a religious virtue (reducible to
the third principle).

A particuliar variety of patience is the quality which is
designated in the Russian language by the grammatically incorrect
term l terpimost ' — tolerance (passivum pro activo). It means the
admission of other people's freedom even when it seems to lead
to error. This attitude is in itself neither a vice nor a virtue,
but may, in different circumstances, become either. It depends
on the object to which it refers (thus injury of the weak by the
strong must not be tolerated, and 'tolerance' of it is immoral
and not virtuous), and still more, on the inner motives from
which it arises. It may spring from magnanimity or from
cowardice, from respect for the rights of others and from contempt
of the good of others, from profound faith in the conquering
power of the higher truth and from indifference to that truth.1

VI

Among the derivative or secondary virtues truthfulness must be
recognised as the most important, both owing to its specifically
human character (for in the strict sense it is only possible for a
being endowed with the power of speech2) and to its significance
for social morality. At the same time this virtue has been and
still is the subject of much disagreement between different schools
of moralists.

The word is the instrument of reason for expressing that
which is, that which may be, and that -which ought to be, i.e.
for expressing the actual, the formal, and the ideal truth. The
possession of such an instrument is part of the higher nature of
man, and therefore when he misuses it, giving expression to un
truth for the sake of lower material ends, he does something
contrary to human dignity, something shameful. At the same
time the word is the expression of human solidarity, the most
important means of communication between men. But this
applies only to true words. Therefore when an individual person
uses speech to express untruth for his own selfish ends (not only

1 A more detailed discussion of it will be found at the beginning of my article
Sfor o spra-vcdlivosti (The Dispute about Justice).

2 Animals may be nai've or cunning, but only man can be truthful or deceitful.

VIRTUES 105

individually selfish, but collectively selfish also, e.g. in the interests
of his family, his class, his party, etc.) he violates the rights of
others and injures the community. A lie is thus both shameful
for the liar, and damaging and insulting to the deceived. The
demand for truthfulness has then a twofold moral foundation.
It is based, first, on the human dignity of the subject himself,
and secondly upon justice^ i.e. upon a recognition of the right of
others not to be deceived by me, in as much as I myself cannot
wish to be deceived by them.

All this is in direct conformity with the demands of reason
and contains nothing dubious. But by abstracting the demand for
truthfulness from its moral basis, and turning it into a special
virtue possessed of absolute worth in itself^ the scholastic philo
sophy has created difficulties and contradictions which do not
follow from the nature of the case. If by a lie is meant the
contrary of truth in the full sense of the word, i.e. not only of the
real and formal, but also and chiefly of the ideal or purely moral
truth (of that which ought to be), it would be perfectly correct
and indisputable to ascribe absolute significance to the rule £do
not lie,' and to admit of no exception to it under any circum
stances ; for, clearly, truth ceases to be truth if there may be a
single case in which it is permissible to depart from it. There
could be no question of it, at any rate not between people who
understand that A = A and that 2x2 = 4. But the trouble is
that the philosophers who particularly insist on the rule ' do not
lie,' as allowing of no exception, are themselves guilty of a falsity
by arbitrarily limiting the meaning of truth (in each given case)
to the real, or more exactly, to the matter of fact aspect of it, taken
separately. Adopting this point of view, they come to the following
absurd dilemma (I give the usual instance as the clearest and
simplest). When a person, having no other means at his com
mand for frustrating a would-be murderer in pursuit of his
innocent victim, hides the latter in his house, and to the pursuer's
question whether that person is there, answers in the negative,
or, for greater plausibility, £ puts him off the track ' by mention
ing quite a different place, — in lying thus he acts either in con
formity with the moral law or in opposition to it. If the first, it
is permissible to violate the moral command c do not lie ' ; morality
is thus deprived of its absolute value, and the way is open to justify

every kind of evil. If the second — if the man has sinned by
telling a lie — it appears that the moral duty of truthfulness actu
ally compelled him to become a real accomplice of the murderer
in his crime — which is equally opposed to reason and to the moral
sense. There can be no middle course, for it is obvious that a
refusal to answer or an evasive answer would simply confirm the
pursuer's suspicion and would finally give away the victim.

It will be remembered that great moralists like Kant and
Fichte, who insist on the absolute and formal character of the moral
law, maintain that even in such circumstances a lie would be
unjustifiable, and that, therefore, the person questioned ought to
fulfil the duty of truthfulness without thinking of the con
sequences, for which (it is urged) he is not responsible. Other
moralists, who reduce all morality to the feeling of pity or the
principle of altruism, believe that lying is permissible and even
obligatory when it can save the life or promote the welfare of
others. This assertion, however, is too wide and indefinite and
easily leads to all kinds of abuse.

How then are we to decide the question whether that un
fortunate man ought to have told a lie or not ? When both
horns of a dilemma equally lead to an absurdity, there must be
something wrong in the formulation of the dilemma itself.
In the present case the ' something wrong ' is to be found in the
ambiguity of the words 'lie,' c false,' and 'lying,' which are
here taken to have one meaning only, or to combine both meanings
in one, which is not really the case. Thus the main term is
falsely understood at the very beginning of the argument, and this
can lead to nothing but false conclusions.

I propose to consider it in detail, and let not the reader grudge
a certain pedanticism of this examination. The question itself
has arisen solely owing to the scholastic pedantry of the abstract
moralists.

According to the formal definition of it a lie is a contradiction
between somebody's assertion * concerning a given fact and the
actual existence, or manner of existence, of that fact. But this
formal conception of a lie has no direct bearing on morality. An

1 The general definition must include both affirmations and denials, and I therefore
use the term assertion to cover both. The words 'judgment ' and ' proposition ' involve
a shade of meaning unsuitable in the present case.

VIRTUES 107

assertion that contradicts reality may sometimes be simply mistaken^
and in that case its actual falsity will be limited to the objective
(or more exactly, to the phenomenal) sphere, without in the
least touching upon the moral aspect of the subject ; that is, it
will contain no lie in the moral sense at all : a mistake is not a
falsehood. Take an extreme case. It is no sin against truthful
ness to talk nonsense through absent-mindedness, or through
ignorance of language, like the German in the well-known
anecdote who mixed up English and German words and affirmed
that he c became a cup of tea.' But apart from mistakes of speech,
the same thing must be said of the mistakes of thought or errors.
Many people have affirmed, and are still affirming, both in speech
and in writing, things as false (in the objective sense) as the
assertion that a man became a cup of tea, but do so consciously,
intending to say precisely what they do say. If, however, they
sincerely take falsity for truth, no one will call them liars or see
anything immoral in their error. Thus neither the contradiction
between speech and reality, nor the contradiction between
thought and reality is a lie in the moral sense. Is it to be
found in the contradiction between the will and reality as
such, i.e. in the simple intention to lie ? But there never
is such simple intention. People — at any rate those who
can be held morally responsible — lie for the sake of something,
with some object. Some lie to satisfy their vanity, to make a
show, to draw attention to themselves, to be noted ; others for
the sake of material gain, in order to deceive some one with profit
to themselves. Both these kinds of lie, of which the first is called
bragging, and the second cheating, fall within the moral sphere,
and are to be condemned as shameful to the person who tells
them, and as insulting and injurious to others. But in addition
to the vainglorious lie or bragging, and the lie for the sake of gain
or cheating, there exists a more subtle kind of lie, which has no
immediately low purpose, but must nevertheless be condemned as
insulting to one's neighbours. I mean the lie out of contempt
for humanity, beginning with the usual CI am not at home' and
down to the most complex political, religious, and literary
humbug. There is nothing shameful in the narrow sense of the
word in this kind of lie (unless of course it is made for purposes
of gain), but it is immoral from the altruistic point of view, as

io8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

violating the rights of the deceived. The person who hoaxes
others would obviously dislike to be deceived himself, and would
regard an attempt to hoax him as a violation of his human rights.
Consequently he ought to respect the same right in other people.
The case of a man who deceives the evil-doer for the sake of
preventing murder obviously does not -fall within the first two
kinds of immoral lie, i.e. it is neither bragging nor cheating ;
could it possibly be classed with the last kind, that is, with
hoaxing, which is immoral in the sense of being insulting to
another person ? Is it not a case of despising humanity in the
person of the would-be murderer, who is, after all, a human
being, and must not be deprived of any of his human rights ?
But the right of the criminal to have me for his accomplice in
the perpetration of the murder can certainly not be reckoned
among his human rights ; and it is precisely the demand for an
accomplice and it alone that is contained in his question as to the
whereabouts of his victim. Is it permissible for a moralist to
have recourse to what he knows to be fiction, especially when
it is a question of a man's life ? For it is sheer fiction to suppose
that in asking his question the would-be murderer is thinking
about the truth, wants to know the truth, and is, therefore, like
any other human being, entitled to have a correct answer from
those who know it. In reality there is nothing of the kind. The
man's question does not exist as a separate and independent fact
expressing his interest as to the place where his victim really is ;
the question is only an inseparable moment in a whole series of
actions which, in their totality,' form an attempt at murder. An
affirmative answer would not be a fulfilment of the universal duty
to speak the truth at all ; it would simply be criminal connivance
which would convert the attempt into actual murder.

If we are to talk of truthfulness, truthfulness demands, in the
first place, that we should take a case as it really zV, in its actual
completeness and its proper inner significance. Now the words
and actions of the would-be murderer in the instance we are
considering are held together by, and derive their actual meaning
solely from, his intention to kill his victim ; therefore it is only in
connection with this intention that one can truly judge of his
words and actions, and of the relation to them on the part of
another person. Since we know the criminal intention, we

VIRTUES

109

have neither a theoretical ground nor a moral right to separate the
man's question (and consequently our answer to it) from the
object to which it actually refers. From this point of view, which
is the only true one, the man's question means nothing but c help
me to accomplish the murder? A correct answer to it, overlooking
the real meaning of the question, and, contrary to obvious fact,
taking it to have some relation to truth — would befa/se from the
theoretical point of view, and from the practical would simply
mean compliance with the criminal request. The only possible
means of refusing that request would be to put the would-be
murderer off the track : such refusal is morally binding both in
relation to the victim whose life it saves, and in relation to
the criminal whom it gives time to think and to give up
his criminal intention. Still less can there be question here of
the violation of the man's right ; it would be too crude an error
to confuse a request for criminal assistance with the right of
learning the truth from the person who knows it. It would be
equally mistaken to insist that the man who, for motives of
moral duty, prevented the murder by the only possible means,
had nevertheless told a lie and therefore acted badly. This would
mean a confusion between the two senses of the word c lie '-
the formal and the moral — the essential difference between which
has been indicated above.

The upholders of the pseudo-moral rigorism may still seek
refuge on religious ground. Although no human right is
violated by putting the murderer on the false track, perhaps the
divine right is violated by it. If there existed a commandment
from above cdo not lie,' we should be bound to obey it un
conditionally, leaving the consequences to God. But the fact is
that there exists in the word of God no abstract commandment x
forbidding lying in general or lying in the formal sense, while
the command to sacrifice our very souls — and not merely the
formal correctness of our words — for our neighbours undoubtedly
exists and must be fulfilled. It might however be thought that
from the mystical point of view a means might be found to
carry out the chief commandment with regard to love, and yet

The commandment ' do not bear false witness against thy neighbour,' i.e. do not
slander, has no bearing on this question, for it forbids not lying in general but only one
definite kind of lie, which is always immoral.

no THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

to avoid the formal lie. Thus we could, after surrendering the
victim to his murderer, turn to God with a prayer to prevent
the murder by some miracle. There certainly are cases on
record of prayers producing the desired effect against all human
probability. This however only happened in hopeless extremity,
when there were no natural means left. But to require from
God a miracle when you can yourself, by a simple and harmless
means, prevent the disaster, would be extremely impious. It
would be a different matter if the last human means available
were immoral ; but to fall back upon the immorality of the
formal lie as such would mean to beg precisely that which is in
question and which cannot be logically proved, for it is based on
the confusion between two utterly distinct ideas of falsity and
falsehood. In the instance we are considering, the answer to the
murderer's question is undoubtedly^/^, but it is not to be con
demned as a lie. The formal falsity of a person's words has as
such no relation to morality, and cannot be condemned from the
moral point of view. Falsehood^ on the other hand, is subject to
such condemnation as the expression of an intention which is in
some way immoral^ and it is in this alone that it differs from
simple falsity. But in the present case it is impossible to find
any such immoral intention, and consequently any falsehood.

Put briefly, our long argument may be expressed as follows.
An assertion which is formally false, that is, which contradicts
the fact to which it refers, is not always a lie in the moral sense.
It becomes such only when it proceeds from the evil will which
intentionally misuses words for its own ends ; and the evil
character of the will consists not in its contradicting any fact
but in its contradicting that which ought to be. Now that which
ought to be is of necessity determined in three ways — in relation,
namely, to that which is below us, on a level with us, and above us
— and amounts to three demands : to submit the lower nature to
the spirit, to respect the rights of our fellow-creatures, and to be
wholly devoted to the higher principle of the world. An expres
sion of our will can be bad or immoral only if it violates one of
these three duties, that is, when the will affirms or sanctions
something shameful, or injurious, or impious. But the will of the
man who puts the would-be murderer off his victim's track does
not violate any of the three duties — there is nothing either

VIRTUES in

shameful or injurious or impious about his will. Thus it is not a
case of a lie in the moral sense at all, or of a breach of any com
mandment, and, in allowing such a means of preventing evil, we
do not allow any exceptions to the moral law. For reasons
indicated, the given case cannot be said to fall under the moral
rule within which it is sought, in contradiction to fact, to
include it.

One of the disputants maintains : since this is a lie, this
bad means ought not to have been used even to save another
person's life. The other side answers : although it is a lie, it is
permissible to use this bad means to save the life of another, for
the duty to save another person's life is more important than the
duty to speak the truth. Both these false assertions are cancelled
by the third, true one. Since this is not a lie (in the moral sense),
the recourse to this innocent means, necessary for the prevention
of murder, is morally binding on the person.1

VII

To make truthfulness into a separate formal virtue involves,
then, an inner contradiction and is contrary to reason. Truth
fulness, like all other 'virtues,' does not contain its moral
quality in itself, but derives it from its conformity to the
fundamental norms of morality. A pseudo-truthfulness divorced
from them may be a source of falsehood, that is, of false valuations.
It may stop at the request that our words should merely be an
exact reflection of the external reality of isolated facts, and thus
lead to obvious absurdities. From this point of view a priest who
repeated exactly what he was told at a confession would satisfy the
demands of truthfulness. Real truthfulness, however, requires
that our words should correspond to the inner truth or meaning
of a given situation, to which our will applies the moral norms.

The analysis of the so-called virtues shows that they have

1 Although in this question Kant sides with the rigorists, in doing so he is really
inconsistent with his own principle that an action, to be moral, must be capable of
b%ing made into a universal rule. It is clear that in putting the would-be murderer off
the place where his victim is, I can, in reason and conscience, affirm my way of action
as a universal rule : every one ought always thus to conceal the victim from the intending
murderer ; and if I put myself into the latter's place, I should wish that I might, in the
same way, be prevented from committing the murder.

ii2 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

moral significance only in so far as they are determined by the
three norms of morality. And although these norms are psycho
logically based upon the corresponding primitive feelings of shame,
pity, and reverence, they do not entirely rest upon this empirical
basis, but are logically developed out of the idea of right or truth
(in the wide sense). Truth demands that we should regard our
lower nature as lower, that is, should subordinate it to rational ends ;
if, on the contrary, we surrender to it, we recognise it not for
what it really is, but for something higher — and thus pervert the
true order of things, violate the truth, regard that lower sphere in
a wrong or immoral way. Likewise, truth demands that we
should regard our fellow-creatures as such, should admit their
rights as equal to ours, should put ourselves into their place ; but
if, whilst recognising ourselves as individuals possessed of full
rights, we regard others as empty masks, we obviously depart from
truth, and our relation to them is wrong. Finally, if we are
conscious of a higher universal principle above us, truth demands
that we should regard it as higher, that is, with religious devotion.

This moral conception of right or truth could certainly not
have arisen were not the feelings of shame, pity, and reverence,
which immediately determine man's rightful attitude to the three
fundamental conditions of his life, present in his nature from the
first. But once reason has deduced from these natural data their
inner ethical content and affirmed it as a duty^ it becomes an in
dependent principle of moral activity, apart from its psychological
basis.1 One may imagine a man whose feeling of modesty is by
nature little developed, but who is rationally convinced that it
is his duty to oppose the encroachments of the lower nature, and
conscientiously fulfils this duty. Such a man will prove in fact
to be more moral in this particular respect than a man who is
modest by nature, but whose reason is defenceless against the
temptations of sense that overcome his modesty. The same is
true of natural kindness (the point dwelt upon by Kant) and
natural religious feeling. Without a consciousness of duty all
these natural impulses to moral conduct are unstable, and can have
no decisive significance in the conflict of opposing motives.

But does the consciousness of duty or of right possess such a
decisive power ? If righteousness from natural inclination is an

1 See Kritika otvletchonnih natckal (The Critique of Abstract Principles).

VIRTUES 113

unstable thing, righteousness from a sense of duty is an extremely
rare thing. The idea of right as actually realised thus proves to
be lacking in the characteristics of universality and necessity. The
vital interests of moral philosophy and the formal demands of reason
cannot acquiesce in this and consequently there arises a new
problem for reason : to find a practical principle which would not
only be morally right, but also highly desirable in itself and for
every one, possessing as such the power to determine human
conduct with necessity, independently of the natural inclinations
of the soul or of the degree of spiritual development — a principle
equally inherent in, understandable to, and actual for all human
beings.

When reason dwells exclusively or mainly on this aspect of
the case, the moral end is understood as the highest good (summum
bonum\ and the question assumes the following form : Does there
exist, and what is the nature of, the highest good, to which all
other goods are necessarily subordinate as to the absolute criterion
of the desirable in general ?

CHAPTER VI

THE SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY
(A Critique of Abstract Hedonism in its Different Forms')

THE moral good is determined by reason as truth (in the wide
sense), or as the right relation to everything. This idea of the
good, inwardly all-embracing and logically necessary, proves in fact
to be lacking in universality and necessity. The good as the ideal
norm of will does not, in point of fact, coincide with the good as
the actual object of desire. The good is that which ought to
be, but (i) not every one desires what he ought to desire ;
(2) not every one who desires the good is able to overcome, for
its sake, the bad propensities of his nature j and finally (3) the
few who have attained the victory of the good over the evil in
themselves— the virtuous, righteous men or saints — are powerless
to overcome by their good "the wickedness in which the whole
world lieth." But in so far as the good is not desired by a person
at all, it is not a good for him ; in so far as it fails to affect the
will, even though it may be affirmed as desirable by the rational
consciousness, it is only an ideal and not a real good ; finally, in
so far as it fails to empower a given person to realise the moral
order in the world as a whole, even though it may affect the will
of that person by making him inwardly better, it is not a
sufficient good.

This threefold discrepancy between the moral and the real
good seems to render the idea of the good self-contradictory.
The definition of the good as that which ought to be involves,
in addition to its ideal content, a real demand that the moral

114

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 115

content should not remain merely theoretical, but that it should
be realised in practice. The very conception of that which ought
to be implies that it ought to be realised. The powerlessness of
the good is not a good. It cannot be right that only a part of
humanity should desire what they ought to desire, that only a few
should live as they ought, and that none should be able to make the
world what it ought to be. All agree that the moral good and
happiness ought to coincide ; the latter ought to be the direct,
universal, and necessary consequence of the former, and express
the absolute desirability and actuality of the moral good. But
in fact they do not coincide ; the real good is distinct from
the moral good, and, taken separately, is understood as welfare.
The actual insufficiency of the idea of the good leads us
to this conception of welfare, which, as a motive for action,
apparently possesses the concrete universality and necessity which
are lacking to the purely moral demands. For every end of
action without exception is directly or indirectly characterised
by the fact that the attainment of that end satisfies the agent or
tends to his welfare, while by no means every end of action can
be directly or even indirectly characterised as morally good.
Every desire as such is apparently simply a desire for its
satisfaction, i.e. for welfare ; to desire calamity or dissatisfaction
would be the same as to desire that which is known to be
undesirable, and would, therefore, be manifestly absurd. And
if, in order to be realised in practice, the moral good must
become the object of desire, the ethical principle will be seen to
depend upon the practical idea (practical in the narrow sense) of
the real good or welfare, which is thus raised to the rank of the
supreme principle of human action.

This eudaemonic principle (from the Greek ev8eu/«w'a, —
the condition of blessedness, well-being) has the obvious advantage
of not raising the question Why ? One may ask why I should
strive for the moral good when this striving is opposed to my
natural inclinations and causes me nothing except suffering ; but
one cannot ask why I should desire my welfare, since I desire it
naturally and necessarily. This desire is inseparably connected
with my existence, and is a direct expression of it. I exist as
desiring, and I desire only that, of course, which satisfies me
or what is pleasant to me. Every one finds his welfare either in

u6 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

what immediately gives him pleasure or in what leads to it —
that is, in what serves as a means for bringing about pleasurable
states. Thus welfare is defined more closely through the idea of
pleasure (Greek rjSov^ hence the theory of Hedonism).

II

When that which ought to be is replaced by that which is
desired, the end of life or the highest good is reduced to pleasure.
This idea, clear, simple, and concrete as it appears to be, involves
insuperable difficulties when applied in the concrete. It is im
possible to deduce any general principle or rule of action from
the general fact that every one desires that which is pleasing to
him. The assertion that the final end of action is directly or
indirectly pleasure, i.e. satisfaction of the subject desiring, is as
indisputable and as pointless as the assertion, e.g.^ that all actions
end in something or lead to something. In concrete reality we
do not find one universal pleasure, but an indefinite multitude
of all kinds of pleasures, having nothing in common between them.
One person finds the highest bliss in drinking vodka, and another
seeks " a bliss for which there is no measure and no name " ;
but even the latter person, when extremely hungry or thirsty,
forgets all transcendental joys, and desires above all things food
and drink. On the other hand, under certain conditions, things
which had given enjoyment or seemed pleasant in the past cease
to be attractive, and, indeed, life itself loses all value.

In truth the idea of pleasure refers to a variety of accidental
desires which differ according to the individual taste and
character, the degree of mental development, age, external
position, and momentary mood. No definite expression can be
given to pleasure as a universal practical principle, unless it is to
be * Let every one act so as to get for himself, as far as possible,
what is pleasing to him at the given moment.' This rule, on
the whole firmly established and more or less successfully applied
in the animal kingdom, is inconvenient in the human world for
two reasons : (i) the presence in man of unnatural inclinations,
the satisfaction of which, though yielding the desired pleasure,
leads at the same time to clear and certain destruction, i.e. to
what is highly undesirable for every one ; (2) the presence in

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 117

man of reason, which compares the various natural impulses and
pleasures with one another, and passes judgment on them from
the point of view of the consequences they involve. In a
rudimentary form we find such judgment even among the
animals who act or refrain from action, not from motives of
immediate pleasant or unpleasant feeling only, but also from
considerations of further, pleasant or unpleasant, consequences
following upon certain behaviour. But with animals these
considerations do not extend beyond simple associations of ideas.
Thus, the idea of the piece of meat seized without permission is
accompanied by the idea of the blows of the whip, etc. The
more abstract character of the human reason allows us, in addition
to such elementary considerations, to make a general comparison
of the immediate motives of pleasure with their remote conse
quences. And it is in following this line of reflection that the
most thorough-going hedonist of the ancient philosophy, Hegesias
of Cyrenae, came to the conclusion that from the point of view of
pleasure life is not worth living. The desire for pleasure is
either fruitless and in this sense painful, or, in achieving its
object, it proves to be deceptive, for a momentary feeling of
pleasure is inevitably followed by tedium and a new painful
search after illusion. Since it is impossible to reach true pleasure,
we must strive to free ourselves from pain, and the surest means
to do so is to die. Such was the outcome of Hegesias's
philosophy, for which he was nicknamed ' the advocate of death '
(7T€io-i#avaTos). But even apart from such extreme conclusions,
the analysis of the idea of pleasure makes it abundantly clear that
4 pleasure ' cannot furnish us with a satisfactory principle of
conduct.

Ill

A simple striving for pleasure cannot be a principle of action
because in itself it is indefinite and devoid of content. Its
actual content is wholly unstable and is to be found solely in the
accidental objects which call it forth. The only universal and
necessary element in the infinite variety of pleasurable states is
the fact that the moment of the attainment of any purpose or
object of desire whatsoever is necessarily experienced and is

n8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

imagined beforehand as a pleasure, i.e. as satisfied or realised
desire. But this elementary psychological truth does not contain
the slightest indication either as to the nature of the object of
desire or as to the means of obtaining it. Both remain empiric
ally variable and accidental. The point of view of pleasure does
not in itself give us any actual definition of the highest good to
which all other goods must be subordinate, and consequently
gives us no rule or principle of conduct. This becomes still
more clear if, instead of taking pleasure in the general sense of
satisfied desire, we take concrete instances of it — i.e. particular
pleasurable states. These states are never desired as such,
for they are simply the consequence of satisfied volition and not
the object of desire. What is desired are certain definite realities
and not the pleasant sensations that follow from them. For a
person who is hungry and thirsty, bread and water are im
mediate objects of desire and not a means for obtaining pleasure
of the sense of taste. We know, of course, from experience that
it is very pleasant to eat when one is hungry ; but a baby wants
to suck previously to any experience whatever. And later, on
reaching a certain age, the child has a very, strong desire for
objects, about the actual pleasurableness of which it knows, as yet,
nothing at all. It is useless to have recourse to 'heredity' in
this case, for then we should have to go as far back as the chemical
molecules, of which probably no one would say that they seek to
enter into definite combinations simply because they remember
the pleasure they had derived from it in the past.

There is another circumstance which does not permit of
identifying the good with the fact of pleasure. Every one knows
from experience that the degree of the desirability of an object or
a state does not always correspond to the actual degree of pleasure
to be derived from the attainment of it. Thus, in the case of
strong erotic attraction to a person of the opposite sex, the fact
of possessing this particular person is desired as the highest bliss,
in comparison with which the possession of any other person is
not desired at all ; but the actual pleasure to be derived from this
infinitely desirable fact has certainly nothing to do with infinity,
and is approximately equal to the pleasure of any other satisfaction
of the instinct in question. Speaking generally, the desirability
of particular objects or their significance as goods is determined

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 119

not by the subjective states of pleasure that follow the attainment
of them, but by the objective relation of these objects to our
bodily or mental nature. The source and the character of that
relation is not as a rule sufficiently clear to us ; it manifests itself
simply as a blind impulse.

But although pleasure is not the essence of the good or the
desirable as such, it is certainly its constant attribute. Whatever
the ultimate reasons of the desirability of the objects or states
that appear to us as good may be, at any rate there can be no
doubt that the achieved good or the fulfilled desire is always
accompanied by a sensation of pleasure. This sensation, in
separably connected with the good as the necessary consequence
of it, may then serve to determine the highest good as a practical
principle.

The highest good is from this point of view a state which
affords the greatest amount of satisfaction. This amount is
determined both directly through the addition of pleasant states
to one another, and indirectly through the subtraction of the un
pleasant states. In other words, the highest good consists in the
possession of goods which, in their totality, or as the final result,
afford the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain.1
The actions of the individual are no longer prompted by a mere
desire for immediate pleasure, but by prudence which judges of
the value of the different pleasures and selects those among them
which are the most lasting and free from pain. The man who
from this point of view is regarded as happy is not one who at
the given moment is experiencing the most intense pleasure, but
one in whose life as a whole pleasant sensations predominate over
the painful — who in the long-run enjoys more than he suffers.
"The wise man," writes Aristotle, "seeks freedom from pain, and
not pleasure " (6 <£/oovi/xo? rb dAim-ov StwKei, ov T& -^Sv). This is
the point of view of eudaemonism proper or of prudent hedonism.
A follower of this doctrine will not c wallow in the mire of sensuous
pleasures,' which destroy both body and soul. He will find his

1 Apart from any pessimistic theories, freedom from pain is from the hedonistic
point of view of more importance than the positive fact of pleasure. The pain of an
unsatisfied and strongly individualised sexual passion, which not unfrequently drives
people to suicide, is incomparably greater than the pleasure of the satisfaction. The
latter can be pronounced to be a great good only in so far as it gives relief from the
great pain of the unsatisfied desire.

120 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

greatest satisfaction in the higher intellectual and aesthetic pleasures,
which, being the most durable, involve the least degree of pain.

IV

In spite of its apparent plausibility, prudent hedonism shares
the fate of hedonism in general : it too proves to be an illusory
principle. When the good is determined as happiness, the
essential thing is the attainment and the secure possession of it.
But neither can be secured by any amount of prudence.

Our life and destiny depend upon causes and factors beyond
the control of our worldly wisdom ; and in most cases the wise
egoist simply loses the opportunities of actual, though fleeting
pleasure, without thereby acquiring any lasting happiness. The
insecurity of all pleasures is all the more fatal because man,
in contradistinction to animals, knows it beforehand : the inevit
able failure of all happiness in the future throws its shadow even
over moments of actual enjoyment. But even in the rare cases in
which a wise enjoyment of life does actually lead to a quantitative
surplus of the painless over the painful states, the triumph of
hedonism is merely illusory. It is based upon an arbitrary ex
clusion of the qualitative character of our mental states (taking
quality not in the moral sense, which may be disputed, but simply in
the psychological or, rather, in the psychophysical sense of the inten
sity of the pleasurable states). There is no doubt that the strongest,
the most overwhelming delights are not those recommended by
prudence but those to be found in wild passions. Granted that
in the case of passions also the pleasure of satisfaction is out of
proportion to the strength of desire, it is at any rate incom
parably more intense than the sensations which a well-regulated
and carefully ordered life can yield. When prudence tells us that
passions lead to ruin, we need not in the least dispute this
truth, but may recall another :

All, all that holds the threat of fate
Is for the heart of mortal wight
Full of inscrutable delight.

No objection can be brought against this from the hedonistic
point of view. Why should I renounce the < inscrutable delight '
for the sake of dull well-being ? Passions lead to destruction,

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 121

but prudence does not save from destruction. No one by means
of prudent behaviour alone has ever conquered death.

It is only in the presence of something higher that the voice
of passions may prove to be wrong. It is silenced by the thunder
of heaven, but the tame speeches of good sense are powerless to
drown it.

The satisfaction of passions which lead to destruction cannot
of course be the highest good ; but from the hedonistic point of
view it may have distinct advantage over the innocent pleasures of
good behaviour which do not save from destruction.' It is true that
intellectual and aesthetic pleasures are not only innocent but noble ;
they involve limitations, however, which preclude them from
being the highest good.

(1) These 'spiritual' pleasures are from the nature of the case
accessible only to persons of a high degree of aesthetic and intel
lectual development, that is, only to a few, while the highest
good must necessarily be universal. No progress of democratic
institutions would give an ass the capacity of enjoying Beethoven's
symphonies, or enable a pig, which cannot appreciate even the
taste of oranges, to enjoy the sonnets of Dante or Petrarch or
the poems of Shelley.

(2) Even for those to whom aesthetic and intellectual pleasures
are accessible, they are insufficient. They cannot fill the whole
of one's life, for they only have relation to some of our mental
faculties, without affecting the others. It is the theoretic, con
templative side of human nature that is alone more or less satisfied
by them, while the active, practical life is left without any definite
guidance. The intellectual and aesthetic goods, as objects of
pure contemplation, do not affect the practical will.

Whilst we admire the heavenly stars
We do not want them for our own.

When a person puts the pleasures of science and of art above
everything from the hedonistic point of view, his practical will
remains without any definite determination, and falls easy prey
to blind passions. And this shows that prudent hedonism is
unsatisfactory as a guiding principle of life.

( 3) Its unsatisfactoriness is also proved by the fact that hedonism
is powerless against theoretical scepticism, which undermines the

122 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

value of the actual objects of intellectual and aesthetic activity.
Suppose I find a real enjoyment in the contemplation of beauty and
in the pursuit of truth. But my reason — the highest authority
for 'prudent' hedonism — tells me that beauty is a subjective
mirage and that truth is unattainable by the human mind. My
pleasure is thus poisoned, and, in the case of a logical mind, is
altogether destroyed. Even apart from real consistency, how
ever, it is clear that the delight in what is known to be a
deception cannot be the highest good.

(4) Now, suppose that our epicurean is free from such
scepticism, and unreflectively gives himself up to the delights of
thought and of creative art, without questioning the ultimate
significance of these objects. To him these * spiritual goods ' may
appear eternal ; but his own capacity for enjoying them is
certainly far from being so ; it can at best survive for a brief
period his capacity for sensuous pleasures.

And yet it is precisely the security or the continuity of pleasures
that is the chief claim of prudent hedonism and the main advantage
it is supposed to possess over the simple striving for immediate
pleasure. Of course if our pleasures were abiding realities that
could be hoarded like property, a prudent hedonist in his decrepit
old age might still consider himself richer than a reckless
profligate who had come to premature death. But since, in truth,
past pleasures are mere memories, the wise epicurean — if he
remains till his death true to the hedonistic point of view — will
be sure to regret that for the sake of faint memories of the
innocent intellectual and aesthetic pleasures he sacrificed oppor
tunities of pleasures far more intense. Just because he never
experienced them, they will now evoke in him painful and fruitless
desire. The supposed superiority of prudent hedonism to a
reckless pursuit of pleasure is based upon an illegitimate confusion
between two points of view. It must be one or the other.
Either we mean the present moment of enjoyment, and in that
case we must give up prudence which is exhibited even in animal
behaviour, or we are thinking of the future consequences of our
actions, and in that case the question must be asked : What
precise moment of the future is to be put at the basis of our
reckoning ? It would be obviously irrational to take any
moment except the last, which expresses the total result of the whole

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 123

life. But at that last moment before death all hedonistic calculus
is reduced to naught, and every possible advantage of the prudent
over the reckless pleasures disappears completely. All pleasures
when they are over cease to be pleasures, and we know this before
hand. Hence the idea of the mm of pleasures is meaningless : the
sum of zeros is not any larger than a simple zero.

The possession of external goods — whether they be pleasures
of the moment or the more lasting happiness supposed to be
secured by prudence — proves to be deceptive and impossible. Is,
then, true welfare or the highest good to be found in freedom
from external desires and affections which deceive and enslave
man and thus make him miserable ? All external goods either
prove to be not worth seeking, or, depending as they do upon
external causes beyond the control of man, they are taken away
from him before their essential unsatisfactoriness has even been
discovered ; and man is thus made doubly miserable. No one
can escape misfortune, and therefore no one can be happy so long
as his will is attracted to objects the possession of which is acci
dental. If true welfare is the state of abiding satisfaction, then
that man alone can be truly blessed who finds satisfaction in that
of which he cannot be deprived, namely, in himself.

Let man be inwardly free from attachment to external and
accidental objects, and he will be permanently satisfied and happy.
Not submitting to anything foreign to him, fully possessing him
self, he will possess all things and even more than all things. If
I am free from the desire for a certain thing, I am more master of
it than the person who possesses it and desires it ; if I am in
different to power, I am more than the ruler who cares for it ; if
I am indifferent to everything in the world, I am higher than the
lord of all the world.

This principle of self-sufficiency ( airra/>/<eia), though expressing
an unconditional demand, is in truth purely negative and con
ditional. In the first place, its force depends upon those very
external goods which it rejects. So long as man is attached to
them, freedom from such attachment is desirable for his higher
consciousness and gives a meaning to his activity. Similarly, so

124 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

long as man is sensitive to the accidental pains of the external
life, triumph over them, steadfastness in adversity, can give him
supreme satisfaction. But once he has risen above the attachment
to external goods and the fear of external misfortune, what
is to be the positive content of his life ? Can it consist simply
in the enjoyment of that victory ? In that case the principle
of self-sufficiency becomes vain self-satisfaction and acquires a
comical instead of a majestic character. The unsatisfactoriness of
the final result renders it superfluous to insist upon the fact that
the force of spirit necessary for the attainment of it is not given
to every one, and even when it is, is not always preserved to the
end. The principle of self-sufficiency thus proves to be lacking
in power of realisation, and shows itself in this respect also to be
only a pseudo- principle. Freedom from slavery to the lower
accidental goods can only be a condition of attaining the highest
good, but not itself be that good. A temple cleared of idols
which had once filled it, does not thereby become God's holy
tabernacle. It simply remains an empty place.1

VI

The individual finds no final satisfaction or happiness either
in the outer worldly goods or in himself (i.e. in the empty form of
self-consciousness). The only way out seems to be afforded by
the consideration that man is not merely a separate individual
entity but also part of a collective whole, and that his true
welfare, the positive interest of his lifej is to be found in serving
the common good or universal happiness.

This is the principle of Utilitarianism^ obviously correspond
ing to the moral principle of altruism, which demands that we
should live for others, help all so far as we are able, and serve
the good of others as if it were our own. In the opinion of the
utilitarian thinkers their teaching must coincide in practice with
the altruistic morality or with the commandments of justice and

1 The principle of self-sufficiency in its practical application partly coincides with
the moral principle of asceticism ; but the essential difference between the two is in
their starting-point and their ultimate motive. Asceticism seeks to attain the mastery
of the spirit over the flesh, or the right attitude of man to what is lower than he.
The demand for self-sufficiency springs from a desire for happiness, so that the principle
of avrdpKeia may be rightly described as hedonistic asceticism.

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 125

mercy. " I must again repeat," writes J. S. Mill, e.g.^ " what the
assailants of utilitarianism seldom have the justice to acknowledge,
that the happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is
right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all
concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others,
utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a dis
interested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus
of Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility.
To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as
oneself, constitutes the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality." l

But Mill does not see that the distinction between these two
principles, the utilitarian and the altruistic, consists in the fact
that the command to live for others is enjoined by altruism as the
expression of the right relation of man to his fellow-creatures, or
as a moral duty which follows from the pure idea of the good ;
while, according to the utilitarian doctrine, man ought to serve
the common good and to decide impartially between his own
interest and those of others simply because, in the last resort, this
course of action (so it is contended) is more advantageous or useful
to himself. Moral conduct thus appears to stand in no need of
any special independent principle opposed to egoism, but to be a
consequence of egoism rightly understood. And since egoism is
a quality possessed by every one, utilitarian morality is suited to all
without exception, which, in the opinion of its followers, is an
advantage over the morality of pure altruism, whether based upon
the simple feeling of sympathy or upon the abstract conception of
duty. Another advantage of utilitarianism is, it is contended, to
be found in the fact that the utilitarian principle is the expression
of the actual historical origin of the moral feelings and ideas. All
of these are supposed to be the result of the gradual extension
and development of self-interested motives, so that the highest
system of morality is simply the most complex modification of
the primitive egoism. Even if this contention were true, the
advantage that would follow therefrom to the utilitarian theory
would be illusory. From the fact that the oak tree grows out of the
acorn and that acorns are food for pigs, it does not follow that oak
trees are also food for pigs. In a similar manner, the supposition
that the highest moral doctrine is genetically related to selfishness,

1 J. S. Mill, Utilitarianism, 2nd ed., London, 1864, pp. 24-25.

126 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

that is, has developed from it through a series of changes in the
past, does not warrant the conclusion that therefore this highest
morality in its present perfect form can also be based upon self-
interest or put at the service of egoism. Experience obviously
contradicts this conclusion : the majority of people — now as
always — find it more profitable to separate their own interests from the
common good. On the other hand, the assumption that selfishness
is the only and the ultimate basis of conduct is contrary to truth.

The view that morality develops out of individual selfishness
is sufficiently disproved by the simple fact that at the early stages
of the organic life, the chief part is played not by the individual
but by the generic self-assertion, which, for separate entities, is
self-denial. A bird giving up its life for its young, or a working
bee dying for the queen bee, can derive no personal advantage
and no gratification to its individual egoism from its act.1 A
decisive predominance of the personal over the generic motives,
and at the same time the possibility of theoretical and consistent
selfishness, only arises in humanity when a certain stage in the
development of the individual consciousness has been reached.
In so far, then, as utilitarianism requires that the individual
should limit and sacrifice himself, not for the sake of any higher
principles, but for the sake of his own selfishness rightly under
stood, it can have practical significance only as addressed to human
individuals at a definite stage of development. It is from this
point of view alone that utilitarianism ought to be considered
here, especially because the questions as to the empirical origin of
any given ideas and feelings have no direct bearing upon the subject
of moral philosophy.

VII

" Every one desires his own good ; but the good of each consists
in serving the good of all ; therefore every one ought to serve
the common good." The only thing that is true in this formula
of pure utilitarianism is its conclusion. But its real grounds are

1 Concerning the primitive character of self-surrender or 'struggle for the life of
others,' see, in particular, Henry Drummond, Ascent of Man. The fact that self-
sacrifice of the individual for the species is based upon real genetic solidarity does not in
the least prove that such sacrifice is the same thing as self-interest.

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 127

not in the least contained in the two premisses from which it is
here deduced. The premisses are false in themselves and placed
in a false relation with one another.

It is not true that every one desires his own good, for a great
many persons desire simply what affords them immediate pleasure,
and find that pleasure in things which are not in the least good
for them, or, indeed, in things that are positively harmful — in
drinking, gambling, pornography, etc. Of course the doctrine
of the common good may be preached to such people also, but it
must rest upon some other basis than their own desires.

Further, even persons who admit the advantages of happiness
or of lasting satisfaction over momentary pleasures, find their
good in something very different from what utilitarianism
affirms it to be. A miser is very well aware that all fleeting
pleasures are dust and ashes in comparison with the real lasting
goods which he locks up in a strong safe ; and utilitarians have
no arguments at their command whereby they could induce him
to empty his safe for philanthropic purposes. They may say to
him that it is in his own interests to bring his advantage into
harmony with the advantage of others. But he has fulfilled this
condition already. Suppose, indeed, that he obtained his riches by
lending money at interest ; this means that he has done service to
his neighbours and helped them, when they were in need, by giving
them loans of money. He risked his capital and received a certain
profit for it, and they lost that profit but used his capital when
they had none of their own. Everything was arranged to mutual
advantage, and both sides judged impartially between their own
and the other person's interests. But why is it that neither Mill
nor any of his followers will agree to pronounce the behaviour of
this sagacious money-lender to be a true pattern of utilitarian
morality ? Is it because he made no use of the money he
hoarded ? He made the utmost use of it, finding the highest
satisfaction in the possession of his treasures and in the conscious
ness of his power (see Pushkin's poem The Avaricious Knight] ;
besides, the greater the wealth hoarded, the more useful it will be
to other people afterwards, so that on this side, too, self-interest
and the interest of others are well balanced.

The reason that utilitarians will not admit the conduct of a
prudent money-lender to be the normal human conduct is simply

128 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

that they really demand far more than mere harmony between
self-interest and the interest of others. They demand that man
should sacrifice his personal advantage for the sake of the common
good, and that he should find in this his true interest. But this
demand, directly contradicting as it does the idea of 'self-interest,'
is based upon metaphysical assumptions that are completely foreign
to the doctrine of pure utilitarianism, and is, apart from them,
absolutely arbitrary.

Actual cases of self-sacrifice are due either (i) to an immediate
impulse of sympathetic feeling — when, for instance, a person saves
another from death at the risk of his own life without any reflec
tions on the subject ; (2) or it may be due to compassion as the
dominating trait of character, as in the case of persons who from
personal inclination devote their life to serving those who suffer ;
(3) or to a highly developed consciousness of moral duty ; (4) or,
finally, it may arise from inspiration with some religious idea.
All these motives in no way depend upon considerations of self-
interest. Persons whose will can be sufficiently influenced by
these motives, taken separately or together, will sacrifice them
selves for the good of others, without feeling the slightest neces
sity for motives of a different kind.1

But a number of people are unkind by nature, incapable of
being carried away by moral or religious ideas, lacking in a clear
sense of duty, and not sensitive to the voice of conscience. It is
precisely over this type of person that utilitarianism ought to
show its power, by persuading -them that their true advantage
consists in serving the common good, even to the point of self-
sacrifice. This, however, is clearly impossible, for the chief
characteristic of these people is that they find their good not in
the good of others, but exclusively in their own selfish well-being.

By happiness as distinct from pleasure is meant secure or lasting
satisfaction ; and it would be utterly absurd to try and prove to
a practical materialist that in laying down his life for others or
for an idea he would be securing for himself an abiding satisfaction
of his own^ that is, of his material interests.

1 A fifth possible motive is the thought of the life beyond the grave, the desire to
obtain the eternal blessings of paradise. Although this motive is a utilitarian one in
the broad sense, it is connected with ideas of a different order, which the modern utili
tarian doctrine rejects on principle.

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 129

It is clear that the supposed connection between the good
which each desires for himself and the true or real good, as the
utilitarians understand it, is simply a crude sophism based upon
the ambiguity of the word c good.' First we have the axiom that
each desires that which satisfies him ; then all the actual multi
plicity of the objects and the means of satisfaction is designated
by one and the same term ' good.' This term is then applied to
quite a different conception of general happiness or of the common
good. Upon this identity of the term which covers two distinct
and even opposed conceptions the argument is based that since
each person desires his own good and the good consists in general
happiness, each person ought to desire and to work for the happi
ness of all. But in truth the good which each desires for himself is
not necessarily related to general happiness, and the good which
consists in general happiness is not that which each desires for
himself. A simple substitution of one term for another is not
enough to make a person desire something different from what
he really does desire or to find his good not in what he actually
finds it.

The various modifications of the utilitarian formula do not
make it more convincing. Thus, starting with the idea of
happiness as abiding satisfaction, it might be argued that personal
happiness gives no abiding satisfaction, for it is connected with
objects that are transitory and accidental, while the general
happiness of humanity, in so far as it includes future generations,
is lasting and permanent, and may, therefore, give permanent
satisfaction. If this argument is addressed to 'each person,' each
can reply to it as follows : " To work for my personal happiness
may give me no abiding satisfaction ; but to work for the future
happiness of humanity gives me no satisfaction whatever. I cannot
possibly be satisfied with a good which, if realised at all, would
certainly not be my good, for in any case I should not then exist.
Therefore, if personal happiness does not profit me, general
happiness does so still less. For how can I find my good, in
that which will never be of any good to me ? "

The true thought involved in utilitarianism as worked out by
its best representatives is the idea of human solidarity^ in virtue of
which the happiness of each is connected with the happiness of
all. This idea, however, has no organic connection with utili-

K

1 30 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

tarianism, and, as a practical principle, is incompatible with the
utilitarian, or, speaking generally, with the hedonistic range of
ideas. One may quite well admit the fact of the oneness of the
human race, the universal solidarity and the consequences that follow
from it in the natural order of things, and yet not deduce from
it any moral rule of conduct. Thus, for instance, a rich profligate,
who lives solely for his- own pleasure and never makes the good
of others the purpose of his actions, may nevertheless justly point
out that, owing to the natural connection between things, his
refined luxury furthers the development of commerce and industry,
of science and arts, and gives employment to numbers of poor
people.

Universal solidarity is a natural law, which exists and acts
through separate individuals independently of their will and
conduct ; and if, in thinking of my own good only, I unwillingly
contribute to the good of all, nothing further can be required
from me from the utilitarian point of view. On the other hand,
universal solidarity is a very different thing from universal
happiness. From the fact that humanity is essentially one, it by
no means follows that it must necessarily be happy : it may be
one in misery and destruction. Suppose I make the idea of uni
versal solidarity the practical rule of my own conduct, and, in
accordance with it, sacrifice my personal advantage to the common
good. But if humanity is doomed to perdition and its c good ' is a
deception, of what use will my self-sacrifice be either to me or to
humanity ? Thus, even if the idea of universal solidarity could,
as a practical rule of conduct, .be connected with the principle
of utilitarianism, this would be of no use At all for the latter.

In utilitarianism the hedonistic view finds its highest ex
pression ; if, therefore, utilitarianism be invalid the whole of the
practical philosophy which finds the highest good in happiness or
self-interested satisfaction stands condemned also. The apparent
universality and necessity of the hedonistic principle, consisting
in the fact that all necessarily desire happiness, proves to be
purely illusory. For, in the first place, the general term
4 happiness ' covers an infinite multiplicity of different objects,
irreducible to any inner unity, and secondly, the universal
desire for one's own happiness (whatever meaning might be
ascribed to this word) certainly contains no guarantee that the

SPURIOUS BASIS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY 131

object desired can be attained, nor indicates the means for its
attainment. Thus the principle of happiness remains simply a
demand^ and therefore has no advantage whatever over the principle
of duty or of the moral good, the only defect of which is precisely
that it may remain a demand, not having in itself the power
necessary for its realisation. This defect is common to both prin
ciples, but the moral principle as compared with the hedonistic has
the enormous advantage of inner dignity and of ideal universality
and necessity. The moral good is determined by the universal
reason and conscience and not by arbitrary personal choice, and is
therefore necessarily one and the same for all. By happiness, on
the other hand, every one has a right to understand what he likes.

So far then we are left with two demands — the rational demand
of duty and the natural demand for happiness — (i) all men must
be virtuous and (2) all men want to be happy. Both these demands
have a natural basis in human nature, but neither contains in
itself sufficient grounds or conditions for its realisation. More
over, in point of fact the two demands are disconnected ; very
often they are opposed to one another, and the attempt to establish
a harmony of principle between them (utilitarianism) does not
stand the test of criticism.

These demands are not of equal value, and if moral philosophy
compelled us to choose between the clear, definite, and lofty —
though not sufficiently powerful — idea of the moral good and the
equally powerless but also confused, indefinite, and low idea of
welfare, certainly all rational arguments would be in favour of the
first.

Before insisting, however, upon the sad necessity of such a
choice, we must consider more closely the moral basis of
human nature as a whole. So far we have only considered it
with reference to the particular development of its three partial
manifestations.

PART II
THE GOOD IS FROM GOD

133

CHAPTER I

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES
I

WHEN a man does wrong by injuring his neighbour actively or by
refusing to assist him, he afterwards feels ashamed. This is the
true spiritual root of all human good and the distinctive character
istic of man as a moral being.

What precisely is here experienced ? To begin with, there is
a feeling of pity for the injured person which was absent at the
actual moment of injury. This proves among other things that
our mental nature may be stirred by impulses more profound and
more powerful than the presence of sensuous motives. A purely
ideal train of reflection is able to arouse a feeling which external
impressions could not awake ; the invisible distress of another
proves to be more effective than the visible.

Secondly, to this simple feeling of pity, already refined by the
absence of the visible object, there is added a new and still more
spiritualised variation of it. We both pity those whom we did
not pity before, and regret that we did not pity them at the
time. We are sorry for having been pitiless — to the regret for
the person injured there is added regret for oneself as the injurer.

But the experience is not by any means exhausted by these
two psychological moments. The feeling in question derives all
its spiritual poignancy and moral significance from the third factor.
The thought of our pitiless action awakens in us, in addition to
the reaction of the corresponding feeling of pity, a still more
powerful reaction of a feeling which apparently has nothing to do
with the case — namely, the feeling of shame. We not only regret
our cruel action, but are ashamed of it, though there might be

136 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

nothing specifically shameful in it. This third moment is so
important that it colours the whole mental state in question. In
stead of saying, * My conscience reproaches me,' we simply say, 1 1
am ashamed,' j'ai hontey ich schame. In the classical languages
the words corresponding to our term c conscience ' were not used
in common parlance, and were replaced by words corresponding to
'shame' — a clear indication that the ultimate root of conscience is
to be found in the feeling of shame. We must now consider
what this implies.

II

The thought of having violated any moral demand arouses
shame, in addition to the reaction of the particular moral element
concerned. This happens even when the demands of shame in its
own specific sphere (man's relation to his lower or carnal nature)
have not been violated. The action in question may not in any
way have been opposed to modesty or to the feeling of human
superiority over material nature. Now this fact clearly shows
that, although we may distinguish the three roots of human morality,
we must not separate them. If we go deep enough they will be
seen to spring from one common root ; the moral order in the
totality of its norms is essentially a development of one and the
same principle which assumes now this and now that form. The
feeling of shame most vitally connected with the facts of the sexual
life transcends the boundaries of material existence, and, as the
expression of moral disapproval, accompanies the violation of every
moral norm to whatever sphere of relations it might belong. In all
languages, so far as I am aware, the words corresponding to our
1 stid ' (shame) are invariably characterised by two peculiarities : (i)
by their connection with the sexual life (cu'Sws — cu'Sota, pudor —
pudenda, honte — parties honteuses, Scham — Schamteile], and (2) by the
fact that these words are used to express disapproval of the violation
of any moral demands whatsoever. To deny the specific sexual
meaning of shame (that is, the special shamefulness of the carnal
relation between the sexes), or to limit shame to this significance
alone, one must reject human language and acknowledge it to be
senseless and accidental.

The general moral significance of shame is simply a further

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 137

development of what is already contained in its specific and
original manifestation with regard to the facts of the sexual life.

Ill

The essence and the chief purpose of the animal life un
doubtedly consists in perpetuating, through reproduction, the
particular form of organic being represented by this or by that
animal. It is the essence of life/or the animal and not merely in
him, for the primal and unique importance of the genital instinct
is inwardly experienced and sensed by him, though, of course,
involuntarily and unconsciously. When a dog is waiting for a
savoury piece, its attitude, the expression of its eyes, and its whole
being seem to indicate that the chief nerve of its subjective
existence is in the stomach. But the greediest dog will altogether
forget about food when its sexual instinct is aroused — and a bitch
will readily give up its food and even its life for its young. The
individual animal seems in this case to recognise, as it were,
conscientiously that what matters is not its own particular life as
such, but the preservation of the given type of the organic life
transmitted through an infinite series of fleeting entities. It
is the only image of infinity that can be grasped by the
animal. We can understand, then, the enormous, the fundamental
significance of the sexual impulse in the life of man. If man is
essentially more than an animal, his differentiation out of the
animal kingdom, his inner self-determination as a human being
must begin precisely in this centre and source of organic life.
Every other point would be comparatively superficial. It is
only in this that the individual animal becomes conscious of the
infinity of the generic life, and, recognising itself as merely a final
event, as merely a means or an instrument of the generic process,
surrenders itself without any struggle or holding back to the
infinity of the genus which absorbs its separate existence. And
it is here^ in this vital sphere, that man recognjses the insufficiency
of the generic infinity in which the animal finds its supreme goal.
Man, too, is claimed by his generic essence, through him, too, it
seeks to perpetuate itself — but his inner being resists this demand.
It protests ' I am not what thou art, I am above thee, I am not
the genus, though I am of it — I am not c genus'' but ''genius.'' I

138 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD •

want to be and I can be immortal and infinite, not in thee only,
but in myself. Thou wouldst entice me into the abyss of thy
bad, empty infinity in order to absorb and destroy me — but I
seek for myself the true and perfect infinity which I could share
with thee also. That which I have from thee wants to be mingled
with thee and to drag me down into the abyss above which I have
risen. But my own being, which is not of thee, is ashamed of
this mingling and opposed to it ; it desires the union which alone
is worthy of it — the true union which is for all eternity.'

The enormous significance of sexual shame as the foundation
both of the material and the formal morality is due to the fact
that in that feeling man acknowledges as shameful, and therefore
bad and wrong, not any particular or accidental deviation from
some moral norm but the very essence of that law of nature which
the whole of the organic world obeys. That which man is ashamed
of is more important than the general fact of his being ashamed.
Since man possesses the faculty of shame, which other animals do
not possess, he might be defined as the animal capable of shame.
This definition, though better than many others, would not make
it clear, however, that man is the citizen of a different world, the
bearer of a new order of being. But the fact of his being
ashamed above all and first of all of the very essence of animal
life, of the main and the supreme expression of natural existence,
directly proves him to be a super-natural and super-animal being.
It is in this shame that man becomes in the full sense human.

IV

The sexual act expresses the infinity of the natural process,
and in being ashamed of the act man rejects that infinity as
unworthy of himself. It is unworthy of man to be merely a
means or an instrument of the natural process by which the blind
life-force perpetuates itself at the expense of separate entities
that are born and perish and replace one another in turn. Man
as a moral being does not want to obey this natural law of
replacement of generations, the law of eternal death. He does
not want to be that which replaces and is replaced. He is
conscious — dimly at first — both of the desire and the power to
include in himself all the fulness of the infinite life. Ideally he

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 139

possesses it already in that very act of human consciousness, but
this is not enough ; he wants to express the ideal in the real—
for otherwise the idea is only a fancy and the highest self-
consciousness is but self-conceit. The power of eternal life
exists as a fact ; nature lives eternally and is resplendent with
eternal beauty; but it is can indifferent nature' — indifferent to
the individual entities which by their change preserve its
eternity. Among these beings, however, there is one who
refuses to play this passive part. He finds that his involuntary
service to nature is a thing to be ashamed of, and that the
reward for it, in the form of personal death and generic
immortality, is not enough. He wants to be not the instrument
but the bearer of eternal life. To achieve this he need not
create any new vital force out of nothing ; he has only to gain
possession of the force which exists in nature and to make better
use of it.

We call man a genius when his vital creative force is not
wholly spent on the external activity of physical reproduction,
but is also utilised in the service of his inner creative activity in
this or that sphere. A man of genius is one who perpetuates
himself apart from the life of the genus and lives in the general
posterity, even though he has none of his own. But if such
perpetuation be taken as final, it obviously proves to be
illusory. It is built upon the same basis of changing generations
which replace one another and disappear, so that neither he who
is remembered nor those who remember him have the true life.
The popular meaning of the word genius gives only a hint of
the truth. The true 'genius' inherent in us and speaking most
clearly in sexual shame does not require that we should have a
gift for art or science and win a glorious name in posterity. It
demands far more than this. Like the true c genius ,' i.e. as
connected with the entire genus though standing above it, it
speaks not to the elect only but to all and each, warning them
against the process of bad infinity by means of which earthly
nature builds up life upon dead bones — for ever, but in vain.

140 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

V

The object of sexual shame is not the external fact of the
animal union of two human beings, but the profound and
universal significance of this fact. This significance lies
primarily, though not entirely, in the circumstance that in such
union man surrenders himself to the blind impetus of an
elementary force. If the path on to which it draws him were
good in itself, one ought to accept the blind character of the
desire in the hope of grasping, in time, its rational meaning
and of following freely that which at first commanded our
involuntary submission. But the true force of sexual shame lies
in the fact that in it we are not ashamed simply of submitting
to nature but of submitting to it in a bad thing, wholly bad.
For the path to which the carnal instinct calls us, and against
which we are warned by the feeling of shame, is a path which is
to begin with shameful, and proves in the end to be both pitiless
and impious. This clearly shows the inner connection between
the three roots of morality, all of which are thus seen to be
involved in the first. Sexual continence is not only an ascetic,
but also an altruistic and a religious demand.

The law of animal reproduction of which we are ashamed
is the law of the replacement or the driving out of one generation
by another — a law directly opposed to the principle of human
solidarity. In turning our life -force to the procreation of
children we turn away from the fathers, to whom nothing is
left but to die. We cannot create anything out of ourselves —
that which we give to the future we take away from the past,
and through us our descendants live at the expense of our
ancestors, live by their death. This is the way of nature ; she
is indifferent and pitiless, and for that we are not responsible.
But our participation in the indifferent and pitiless work of
nature is our own fault, though an involuntary one — and we
are dimly aware of that fault beforehand, in the feeling of sexual
shame. And we are all the more guilty because our participation
in the pitiless work of nature, which replaces the old generations
by the new, immediately affects those to whom we owe the
greatest and special duty — our own fathers and forefathers.
Thus our conduct proves to be impious as well as pitiless.

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 141

VI

There is a great contradiction here, a fatal antinomy, which
must be recognised even if there is no hope of solving it.
Child-bearing is a good thing ; it is good for the mother, who, in
the words of the Apostle, is saved by child-bearing, and is of course
also good for those who receive the gift of life. But at the
same time it is equally certain that there is evil in physical
reproduction — not the external and accidental evil of any par
ticular calamities which the newly born inherit with their very
life, but the essential and moral evil of the carnal physical act
itself, in and through which we sanction the blind way of nature
shameful to us because of its blindness, pitiless to the last
generation, and impious because it is to our own fathers that we are
pitiless. But the evil of the natural way for man can only be put
right by man himself, and what has not been done by the man of
the present may be done by the man of the future, who, being
born in the same way of animal nature, may renounce it and change
the law of life. This is the solution of the fatal antinomy : the
evil of child-bearing may be abolished by child-bearing itself,
which through this becomes a good. This saving character of
child-bearing will, however, prove illusory if those who are born
will do the same thing as those who bore them, if they sin and
die in the same way. The whole charm of children, their
peculiar human charm, is inevitably connected with the thought
and the hope that they will not be what we are, that they will
be better than we — not quantitatively better by one or two
degrees, but essentially, — that they will be men of a different life,
that in them indeed is our salvation — for us and for our fore
fathers. The human love for children must contain something
over and above the hen's love ; it must have a rational meaning.
But what rational meaning can there be in regarding a future
scoundrel as the purpose of one's life, and in feeling delight and
tenderness for him, while condemning the present scoundrels ?
If the future for which children stand differs from the present
only in the order of time, in what does the special charm of
children lie ? If a poisonous plant or a weed will grow out of
the seed, what is there in the seed to admire ? But the fact is
that the possibility of a better, a different way of life, of a

142 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

different and higher law which would lift us above nature with its
vague and impotent striving for the fulness of light and power —
this possibility^ present both in us and in the children, is greater
in them than in us, for in them it is still complete and has not yet
been wasted, as in our case, in the stream of bad and empty reality.
These beings have not yet sold their soul and their spiritual birth
right to the evil powers. Every one is agreed that the special
charm of children is in their innocence. But this actual inno
cence could not be a source of joy and delight to us were we
certain that it is bound to be lost. There would be nothing com
forting or instructive in the thought that their angels behold the
face of the heavenly Father were it accompanied by the con
viction that these angels will be sure to become immediately blind.
If the special moral charm of children upon which their
aesthetic attractiveness is based depends upon a greater possibility
open to them of a different way of life, ought we not, before
bearing children for the sake of that possibility^ actually to alter our
own bad way ? In so far as we are unable to do this child-bearing
may be a good and a salvation for us ; but what ground have we
for deciding beforehand that we are unable ? And is the certitude
of our own impotence a guarantee for the future strength of those
to whom we shall pass on our life ?

VII

Sexual shame refers not to the physiological fact taken in itself
and as such morally indifferent, nor to the sexual love as such which
may be unashamed and be the greatest good. The warning and,
later, the condemning voice of sexual shame refers solely to the
way of the animal nature, which is essentially bad for man, though
it may, at the present stage of human development, be a lesser
.and a necessary evil — that is, a relative good.

But the true, the absolute good is not to be found on this
path, which begins, for human beings at any rate, with abuse.
Sexual human love has a positive side, which, for the sake of brevity
and clearness, I will describe as ' being in love.'' This fact is of
course analogous to the sexual desire of animals and develops on
the basis of it, but clearly it cannot be reduced to such desire —
unless man is to be altogether reduced to animal. Being in love

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 143

essentially differs from the sexual passion of animals by its in
dividual, super-generic character : the object for the lover is this
definite person, and he strives to preserve for all eternity not the
genus but that person and himself with it. Being in love differs
from other kinds of individual human love — parental, filial,
brotherly, etc. — chiefly by the indissoluble unity there is in it
between the spiritual and the physical side. More than any other
love it embraces the whole. being of man. To the lover both
the mental and the physical nature of the beloved are equally
interesting, significant, and dear ; he is attached to them with an
equal intensity of feeling, though in a different way.1 What is
the meaning of this from the moral point of view ? At the time
when all the faculties of man are in their first blossom there springs
in him a new, spiritually- physical force which fills him with
enthusiasm and heroic aspirations. A higher voice tells him that
this force has not been given him in vain, that he may use it for
great things ; that the true and eternal union with another being,
which the ecstasy of his love demands, may restore in them both
the image of the perfect man and be the beginning of the same
process in all humanity. The ecstasy of love does not of course
say the same words to all lovers, but the meaning is the same. It
represents the other, or the positive, side of what is meant by
sexual shame. Shame restrains man from the wrong, animal, way ;
the exultation of love points to the right way and the supreme
goal for the positive overflowing force contained in love. But
when man turns this higher force to the same old purpose — to the
animal work of reproduction — he wastes it. It is not in the least
necessary for the procreation of children whether in the human or
in the animal kingdom. Procreation is carried on quite successfully
by means of the ordinary organic functions, without any lofty
ecstasy of personal love. If a simple action b is sufficient to
produce result f, and a complex action a + b is used instead, it is
clear that the whole force of a is wasted.

VIII

The feeling of shame is the natural basis of the principle of
asceticism, but the content of that feeling is not exhausted by the

1 See my article Smysl liubiii (The Meaning of Love).

144 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

negative rules of abstinence. In addition to the formal principle
of duty, which forbids shameful and unworthy actions and con
demns us for committing them, shame contains a positive side
(in the sexual sphere connected with 'being in love'), which
points to the vital good that is preserved through our con
tinence and is endangered or even lost through yielding to the
c works of the flesh.' In the fact of shame it is not the formal
element of human dignity or of the rational super-animal power
of infinite understanding and aspiration which alone resists the
lure of the animal way of the flesh. The essential vital wholeness
of man, concealed but not destroyed by his present condition,
resists it also.

We are touching here upon the domain of metaphysics j but
without entering it or forsaking the ground of moral philosophy,
we can and must indicate this positive aspect of the fundamental
moral feeling of shame, indubitable both from the logical and from
the real point of view.

Shame in its primary manifestation would not have its peculiar
vital character, would not be a localised spiritually - organic
feeling, if it expressed merely the formal superiority of human
reason over the irrational desires of the animal nature. This
superiority of intellectual faculties is not lost by man on the path
against which shame warns him. It is something else that is lost
— something really and essentially connected with the direct object
of shame ; and it is not for nothing that sexual modesty is also
called continence.1

Man has lost the wholeness of his being and his life, and in the
true, continent love to the other sex he. seeks, hopes, and dreams
to re-establish this wholeness. These aspirations, hopes, and dreams
are destroyed by the act of the momentary, external, and illusory
union which nature, stifling the voice of shame, substitutes for the
wholeness that we seek. Instead of the spiritually-corporeal inter-
penetration and communion of two human beings there is
simply a contact of organic tissues and a mingling of organic
secretions ; and this superficial, though secret, union confirms,
strengthens, and perpetuates the profound actual division of the

1 The word translated by ' continence ' is in the Russian tsclomudric, which, by
derivation, means ' the wisdom of wholeness ' (from tselost — wholeness, and mudrost —
wisdom). — Translator's Note.

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 145

human being. The fundamental division into two sexes or in
half is followed by the division, conditioned by the external
union of the sexes, into successive series of generations that
replace and expel one another, and into a multitude of co
existing entities which are external, foreign, and hostile to one
another. The wholeness or unity of man is broken in depth,
in breadth, and in length. But this striving for division, this
centrifugal force of life, though everywhere realised to some extent,
can never be realised wholly. In man it assumes the inward
character of wrong or sin, and is opposed to and in conflict with
the wholeness of the human being, which is also an inward con
dition. The opposition expresses itself, to begin with, in the
fundamental feeling of shame or modesty, which, in the sphere of
sensuous life, resists nature's striving for mingling and division. It
expresses itself also in the positive manifestation of shame — in the
exultation of chaste love, which cannot reconcile itself either to
the division of the sexes or to the external and illusory union.
In the social life of man as already broken up into many, the
centrifugal force of nature manifests itself as the egoism of each
and the antagonism of all, and it is once more opposed by the
wholeness which now expresses itself as the inner unity of
externally separated entities, psychologically experienced in the
feeling of pity.

IX

The centrifugal and the disruptive force of nature which
strives to break up the unity of man both in his psychophysical
and in his social life, is also directed against the bond which unites
him to the absolute source of his being. Just as there exists in
man a natural materialism — the desire to surrender slavishly, with
grovelling delight, to the blind forces of animality ; as there exists
in him a natural egoism — the desire inwardly to separate himself
from everything else and to put all that is his own unconditionally
above all that appertains to others — so there exists in man a natural
atheism or a proud desire to renounce the absolute perfection,
to make himself the unconditional and independent principle of
his life. (I am referring to practical atheism, for the theoretical
often has a purely intellectual character and is merely an error of

L

146 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the mind, innocent in the moral sense.) This is the most im
portant and far-reaching aspect of the centrifugal force, for it
brings about a separation from the absolute centre of the universe,
and deprives man not only of the possibility, but even of the desire
for the all-complete existence. For man can only become all
through being inwardly united to that which is the essence of all
things. This atheistic impulse calls forth a powerful opposition
from the inmost wholeness of man which in this case finds
expression in the religious feeling of piety. This feeling directly
and undoubtedly testifies to our dependence, both individual and
collective, upon the supreme principle in its different manifesta
tions, beginning with our own parents and ending with the
universal Providence of the heavenly Father. To the exceptional
importance of this relation (the religiously moral one) corresponds
the peculiar form which the consciousness of wrong assumes when
it is due to the violation of a specifically religious duty. We are
no longer 'ashamed' or 'conscience-stricken,' but 'afraid.' The
spiritual being of man reacts with special concentration and
intensity in the feeling of the 'fear of God,' which may, when
the divine law has been even involuntarily violated, become panic
terror (horror sacrilegii), familiar to the ancients.

Horror sacrilegii (in the classical sense) disappears as man
grows up spiritually, but the fear of God remains as the necessary
negative aspect of piety — as ' religious shame.' To have fear of
God, or to be God-fearing, does not of course mean to be afraid
of the Deity, but to be afraid of one's opposition to the Deity, or
of one's wrong relation to Him. It is the feeling of being out of
harmony with the absolute good or perfection, and it is the
counterpart of the feeling of reverence or piety in and through
which man affirms his right or due relation to the higher principle
— namely, his striving to participate in its perfection, and to
realise the wholeness of his own being.

If we understand shame rooted in the sexual life as the mani
festation of -the wholeness of the human being, we shall not be
surprised to find that feeling overflowing into other moral spheres.

Speaking generally, it is necessary to distinguish the inner

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 147

essence of morality both from its formal principle, or the moral
law, and from its concrete expressions. The essence of morality
is in itself one — the wholeness of man, inherent in his nature as an
abiding norm, and realised in life and history as moral doing, as the
struggle with the centrifugal and the disruptive forces of existence.
The formal principle, or the law of that doing, is in its purely
rational expression as duty also one : thou oughtest in all things to
preserve the norm of human existence, to guard the wholeness of
the human being, or, negatively, thou oughtest not to allow
anything that is opposed to the norm, any violation of the
wholeness. But the one essence and the one law of morality
are manifested in various ways, according to the concrete
actual relations of human life. Such relations are indefinitely
numerous, though both logical necessity and facts of experience
equally compel us, as we have seen, to distinguish three main
kinds of relation that fall within the range of morality — the
relations to the world below us, to the world of beings like us, and
to the higher.

The roots of all that is real are hidden in darkest earth, and
morality is no exception. It does not belong to a kingdom where
trees grow with their roots uppermost. Its roots too are hidden
in the lower sphere. The whole of morality grows out of the
feeling of shame. The inner essence, the concrete expression,
and the formal principle or law of morality are contained in that
feeling like a plant in a seed, and are distinguished only by reflec
tive thought. The feeling of shame involves at one and the same
time a consciousness of the moral nature of man which strives
to maintain its wholeness, a special expression of that wholeness —
continence, — and a moral imperative which forbids man to yield
to the powerful call of the lower nature, and reproaches him for
yielding to it. The commands and the reproaches of shame are
not merely negative and preventive in meaning. They have a
positive end in view. We must preserve our inner potential
wholeness in order to be able to realise it as a fact, and actually
to create the whole man in a better and more lasting way than the
one which nature offers us. 'That's not it, that's not it ! ' says the
feeling of shame, thus promising us the true, the right thing, for
the sake of which it is worth while to renounce the way of the flesh.
This way, condemned by shame, is the way of psychophysical

148 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

disruption — spiritual as well as corporeal, — and to such disruption
is opposed not only the spiritual, but also the physical wholeness
of man.

But realisation of complete wholeness, of which continence is
merely the beginning, requires the fulness of conditions embracing
the whole of human life. This realisation is complicated and
delayed, though not prevented by the fact that man has already
multiplied, and that his single being has been divided into a
number of separate entities. Owing to this new condition
which creates man as a social being^ the abiding wholeness of his
nature expresses itself no longer in continence alone that safe
guards him from natural disruption but also in social solidarity
which, through the feeling of pity, re-establishes the moral unity
of the physically divided man. At this stage the difference
between the moral elements, merged into one in the primary
feeling of shame, becomes more clear. The feeling of pity
expresses the inner solidarity of living beings, but is not identical
with it, and it preserves its own psychological distinctness as
compared with the instinctive shame. The formally -moral
element of shame which at first was indistinguishable from its
psychophysical basis, now develops into the more subtle and
abstract feeling of conscience (in the narrow sense). Correspond
ing to the transformation of the carnal instinct into egoism,
we have the transformation of shame into conscience. But the
ultimate and fundamental significance of shame shows itself here
also, for, as already pointed out, the words c conscience ' and
'shame' are interchangeable even in the case of actions that are
purely egoistic and have nothing to do with sex. Morality is
one, and being fully expressed in shame, it reacts both against
the works of the flesh and (implicit e) against the bad con
sequences of these works — among them, against the egoism of the
man already made multiple. The specific moral reaction against
this new evil finds its psychological expression in pity, and its
formally-moral expression in conscience — this ' social shame.'

But neither the moral purity of continence preserved by
shame, nor the perfect moral solidarity which inspires our heart
with equal pity for all living beings, empowers us to realise that
which chaste love and all-embracing pity demand. And yet
conscience clearly tells us * you must, therefore you can.'

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 149

Man is ashamed of the carnal way because it is the way of the
breaking up and scattering of the life-force, and the end of it is
death and corruption. If he is really ashamed of it and feels it to
be wrong, he must follow the opposite path of wholeness and
concentration leading to eternal life and incorruptibility. If,
further, he really pities all his fellow-creatures, his aim must be
to make all immortal and incorruptible. His conscience tells him
that he must do it, and that therefore he can.

And yet it is obvious that the task of gaining immortal and
incorruptible life for all is above man. But he is not divided by
any impermeable barrier from that which is above him. In the
religious feeling the hidden normal being of man reacts against
human impotence as clearly as in the feeling of shame it reacts
against carnal desires, and in pity against egoism. And conscience,
assuming the new form of the fear of God, tells him : all that
you ought to be and have the power to be is in God ; you ought
and therefore you can surrender yourself to Him completely,
and through Him fulfil your wholeness — gaining the abiding
satisfaction of your chaste love and your pity, and obtaining
for yourself and for all immortal and incorruptible life. Your
impotence is really as anomalous as shamelessness and pitilessness ;
this anomaly is due to your separation from the absolute principle
of right and power. Through your reunion with Him, you must
and can correct it.1

The supreme principle to which we are united through the
religious feeling is not merely an ideal perfection. Perfection as
an idea is possible for man. But man is powerless to make his
perfection actual, to make his good the concrete good. Herein
is the deepest foundation of his dependence upon the Being in
whom perfection is given as an eternal reality, and who is the
indivisible and unchangeable identity of Good, Happiness, and
Bliss. In so far as we are united to It by the purity and the
whole-heartedness of our aspirations, we receive the corresponding
power to fulfil them, the force to render actual the potential
wholeness of all humanity.

This is the reason why we are so ashamed or conscience-

1 In the Church prayer human impotence is put side by side with sins and trans
gressions : " Lord, cleanse our sins ; God, forgive our transgressions 5 Holy One, Visit
and heal our frailties." Frailties is here used especially in opposition to holiness.

150 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

stricken at every bad action or even a bad thought. It is not an
abstract principle or any arbitrary rule that is violated thereby.
But a false step is taken, a delay is caused on the only true path
to the one goal that is worth reaching — the restoration of immortal
and incorruptible life for all

Shame and conscience and fear of God are merely the
negative expressions of -the conditions that are indispensable to
the real and great work of manifesting God in man.

XI

The moral good then is from its very nature a way of
actually attaining true blessedness or happiness — such happiness,
that is, as can give man complete and abiding satisfaction.
Happiness (and blessedness) in this sense is simply another
aspect of the good, or another way of looking at it — there is as
much inner connection and as little possibility of contradiction
between these two ideas as between cause and effect, purpose and
means, etc. One ought to desire the good for its own sake^ but
the purity of the will is not in the least marred by the conscious
ness that the good must itself necessarily mean happiness for the
one who fulfils its demands. On the other hand, the circum
stance that it is natural to desire happiness does not in any way
prevent us from understanding and bearing in mind the empirical
fact that all happiness which is not fictitious or illusory must be con
ditioned by the good, i.e. by the fulfilment of the moral demands.

If the law of blessedness or of true evSai/jiovia is determined
by the moral good, there can be no opposition between the
morality of pure duty and eudaemonism in general. The good
will must be autonomous ; but the admission that right conduct
leads to true happiness does not involve the heteronomy of the
will. Such an admission bases happiness upon the moral good,
subordinates it to the latter, and is therefore in perfect agreement
with the autonomy of the will. Heteronomy consists, on the
contrary, in separating happiness from what is morally right, in
subordinating the desirable not to the moral law, but to a law
foreign to morality. Thus the fundamental opposition is not
between morality and eudaemonism as such, but between morality
and eudaemonism which is abstract or, more exactly, which

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 151

abstracts happiness from its true and purely moral conditions,
thus rendering it fictitious and illusory.

Why then does the fulfilment of duty so often fail to give
complete satisfaction ? I so little wish to avoid this objection that
I would make it stronger, and urge that human virtue never gives
complete satisfaction. But is this virtue itself ever complete^
and is there any one born £e/< ^eA-^/xaros <rapKos' ' «K tfeA^aros
dvSpos ' who has ever perfectly fulfilled his duty ? It is clear that
the perfect good has never been realised by any individual human
being ; and it is just as clear that a superhuman being, capable of real
ising the perfect good, will find complete or perfect satisfaction in
doing so. It follows also that the autonomy of the will, that is, the
power to desire the pure good for its own sake aloney apart from
any extraneous considerations, and to desire the complete good — is
merely a formal and subjective characteristic of man. Before it can
become real and objective, man must acquire the power actually
to fulfil the whole good, and thus obtain perfect satisfaction.
Apart from this condition, virtue has a negative and insufficient
character, which is not due to the nature of the moral principle
itself. Thus when, in the first place, the moral principle demands
that the spirit should have power over the flesh, this demand
involves no external limitations. The norm is the perfect and
absolute power of the spirit over the flesh, its complete and actual
autonomy, in virtue of which it must not submit to the extrane
ous law of carnal existence — the law of death and corruption. In
this respect, then, immortal and incorruptible life is alone a perfect
good, and it also is perfect happiness. Morality which does not
lead to a really immortal and incorruptible life, cannot in
strictness be called autonomous, for it obviously submits to the law
of material life that is foreign to it. Similarly, with reference to
altruism the moral demand to help every one puts no limit to that
help, and obviously the complete good here requires that we should
obtain for all our fellow-beings perfect blessedness or absolute
happiness. Our altruism does not fulfil this demand ; but the
insufficiency of our good is due not to the moral law, whose
requirements are unlimited, but to the law of limited material
being that is alien to it. Consequently, altruism which obeys this
foreign law cannot in the strict sense be called an expression of
autonomous morality, but proves to be heteronomous.

152 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

XII

The good then is accompanied by dissatisfaction or absence of
happiness only when and in so far as it is incomplete and imperfect,
only in so far as the moral law is not fulfilled to the end and still
gives way before another law, extraneous to it. But the perfect
or the purely autonomous good gives also perfect satisfaction.
In other words, the good is separated from happiness not by the
nature of its demands, but by the external obstacles in the way of
their realisation. Moral principle consistently carried out to the
end, duty perfectly fulfilled inevitably leads to the highest good
or happiness. The opposition, therefore, between the theory of
general happiness and pure morality is merely accidental, due to
the empirical imperfection of the human good or to a wrong
conception both of good and of happiness. In the first case, the
discrepancy between good and happiness (sufferings of the right
eous) proves merely the insufficiency or the incompleteness — the
unfinished character of the given moral condition. In the second
case, that of a wrong conception, the moral interest is absent
altogether, both when the wrongly conceived good coincides or
when it does not coincide with the wrongly conceived happiness.
Thus, for instance, if a person zealously prays that he might pick
up in the street a purse full of money, or win in a lottery, the
failure of such prayer has no bearing whatever upon the question
as to the disharmony between virtue (in this case religious virtue)
and well-being, or good and happiness. For in this case both are
wrongly understood. Prayer as a'means to, a low and selfish end is
opposed to the Divine and the human dignity, and is not a real good ;
nor is the acquisition of money which one has not deserved a blessing
or real happiness. On the other hand, when a man does philan
thropic work not out of pity or altruistic motives, but only for the
sake of obtaining an order of merit, and actually receives such an
order, such coincidence between the wrongly conceived good and
the wrongly conceived happiness is of as little interest to ethics
as the discrepancy between -the two in the first case. There is
no need to prove that although such philanthropy may be useful
from the social and practical point of view, it is not a virtue, nor
that an order of merit is but an illusory blessing. It is clear

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 153

that true welfare can only be born of feelings and actions
that are themselves well conceived, i.e. that possess moral
dignity and are in harmony with the good ; and that real good in
its turn cannot in the long run lead to misfortune, i.e. to evil.
It is very significant indeed that the same conception of cevil'
equally expresses the opposition both to virtue and to happiness.
Evil actions and evil fortune are equally called evil, which clearly
indicates the inner kinship between the good and blessedness ;
and indeed these two ideas are often identified in ordinary speech,
one term being substituted for the other. The separation between
moral good and happiness is then merely conditional : the absolute
good involves also the fulness of happiness.

The ultimate question as to the meaning of life is not then
finally solved either by the existence of good feelings inherent in
human nature, or by the principles of right conduct which reason
deduces from the moral consciousness of these feelings. Moral
sentiments and principles are a relative good, and they fail to give
complete satisfaction. We are compelled both by reason and by
feeling to pass from them to the good in its absolute essence, un
conditioned by anything accidental or by any external limitations,
and consequently giving real satisfaction, and true and complete
meaning to life as a whole.

XIII

That the pure moral good must finally be experienced as
blessedness, that is, as perfect satisfaction or bliss, was admitted
by the stern preacher of the categoric imperative himself. But
the method whereby he sought to reconcile these two ultimate
conceptions can certainly not be pronounced satisfactory.

The great German philosopher admirably defined the formal
essence of morality as the absolutely free or autonomous activity
of pure will. But he was unable to avoid in the domain of
ethics the one-sided subjective idealism which is characteristic of
his philosophy as a whole. On this basis there can only be a
fictitious synthesis of good and happiness, only an illusory realisa
tion of the perfect moral order.

Subjectivism, in the crude and elementary sense, is of course
excluded by the very conception of the pure will^ of a will, that is,

154 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

free from any empirical and accidental motives, and determined
only by the idea of absolute duty (das Sollen\ i.e. by the universal
and necessary norm of practical reason. In virtue of this norm
the moral principle of our conduct (and of our every action)
must, without inner contradiction, be capable of being affirmed
as a universal and necessary law, applicable to ourselves in exactly
the same way as to everybody else.

This formula is in itself (i.e. logically) perfectly objective ; but
wherein does its real power lie ? Insisting upon the unconditional
character of the moral demand, Kant answers only for the
possibility of fulfilling it : you must, therefore you can. But the
possibility by no means warrants the actuality, and the perfect
moral order may remain altogether unrealised. Nor is it clear
from the Kantian point of view what is the ultimate inner founda
tion of the moral demand itself. In order that our will should be
pure or (formally) autonomous it must be determined solely by
respect for the moral law — this is as clear as A = A. But why
should this A be necessary at all ? Why demand a l pure ' will ?
If I want to get pure hydrogen out of water, I must of course
take away the oxygen. If, however, I want to wash or to drink
I do not need pure hydrogen, but require a definite combination
of it with oxygen, H2O, called water.

Kant must undoubtedly be recognised as the Lavoisier of moral
philosophy. His analysis of morality into the autonomous and the
heteronomous elements, and his formulation of the moral law, is
one of the greatest achievements of the human mind. But we
cannot rest satisfied with the theoretical intellectual interest alone.
Kant speaks of practical reason as the unconditional principle of
actual human conduct, and in doing so he resembles a scientist
who would demand or think it possible that men should use pure
hydrogen instead of water.

Kant finds in conscience the actual foundation of his moral
point of view. Conscience is certainly more than a demand — it
is a fact. But in spite of the philosopher's sincere reverence for
this testimony of our higher nature, it lends him no help. In the
first place, the voice of conscience says not exactly what according
to Kant it ought to say, and secondly, the objective significance
of that voice remains, in spite of all, problematic from the point
of view of our philosopher.

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 155

Kant, it will be remembered, pronounces all motives other than
pure reverence for the moral law to be foreign to true morality. This
is unquestionably true of motives of selfish gain, which induce us
to do good for our own advantage. According to Kant, however,
a man who helps his neighbour in distress out of a simple feeling
of pity does not manifest a ' pure ' will either, and his action, too,
is devoid of moral worth. In this case Kant is again right from
the point of view of his moral chemistry ; but the supreme court
of appeal to which he himself refers — conscience — does not adopt
this point of view. It is only as a joke that one can imagine —
as Schiller does in his well-known epigram — a man whose
conscience reproaches him for pitying his neighbours and helping
them with heartfelt compassion :

" Willingly serve I my friends, but I do it, alas, with affection,
Hence I am plagued with the doubt, virtue I have not attained."

" This is your only resource, you must stubbornly seek to abhor them,
Then you can do with disgust that which the law may enjoin."

In truth, conscience simply demands that we should stand in
the right relation to everything, but it says nothing as to whether
this right relation should take the form of an abstract conscious
ness of general principles, or directly express itself as an immediate
feeling, or — what is best — should unite both these aspects. This
is the question as to the degrees and forms of moral development
and, though very important in itself, it has no decisive significance
for the general valuation of the moral character of human conduct.

Apart, however, from the circumstance that Kant's ethical
demands are at variance with the deliverances of conscience
to which he appeals, it may well be asked what significance can
attach to the very fact of conscience from the point of view of
* transcendental idealism.' The voice of conscience bearing witness
to the moral order of the universe filled Kant's soul with awe.
He was inspired with the same awe, he tells us, at the sight of the
starry heaven. But what is the starry heaven from Kant's point of
view ? It may have had some reality for the author of The Natural
History and Theory of the Heavens J- but the author of the Critique of
Pure Reason has dispelled the delusions of simple-hearted realism.
The starry heaven, like the rest of the universe, is merely a presenta-

1 The chief work of Kant's pre-critical period.

156 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

tion, an appearance in our consciousness. Though due to an
unknown action upon us of something independent of us, the
phenomenon as actually presented has nothing to do with those
utterly mysterious entities, and does not in any way express the true
nature of things : it entirely depends upon the forms of our sensuous
intuition and the power of our imagination acting in accordance
with the categories of our understanding. And if Kant felt awe
struck at the grandeur of the starry heaven, the true object of
that feeling could only be the grandeur of human intellect, or,
rather, of intellectual activity, which creates the order of the
universe in order to cognise it.

Kant's l idealism ' deprives the mental as well as the visible
world of its reality. In his criticism of Rational Psychology he
proves that the soul has no existence on its own account, that in
truth all that exists is the complex totality of the phenomena of the
inner sense, which are no more real than the events of the so-called
external world. The connection between the inner (as between
the c outer ') phenomena is not due to the fact that they are ex
perienced by one and the same being, who suffers and acts in and
through them. The connectedness or the unity of the mental life
depends entirely upon certain laws or general correlations which form
the definite order or the working mechanism of psychical events.

If we do happen to find in this mechanism an important spring
called conscience, this phenomenon, however peculiar it may be,
takes us as little beyond the range of subjective ideas as does the ring
of Saturn, unique of its kind, which we observe through the
telescope.

XIV

Kant suffered from his subjectivism in moral philosophy quite
as much as he prided himself on it in theoretical philosophy ; and
he was well aware that the fact of conscience is not in itself a way
of escape. If conscience is merely a psychological phenomenon,
it can have no compelling force. And if it is something more,
then the moral law has its foundation not in us only, but also
independently of us. In other words, this unconditional law
presupposes an absolute lawgiver.

At the same time Kant, who in spite of the influence of

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 157

Rousseau had none of the moral optimism of the latter, clearly saw
the gulf between what ought to be according to the unconditional
moral law and what is in reality. He well understood that the
gulf cannot be bridged, the good cannot completely triumph, the
ideal cannot be perfectly realised in the conditions of the given
empirical existence or of the mortal life. And so he c postulated '
the immortality of the soul — of that very soul the existence of
which he disproved in the Critique of Pure Reason.

Thus, notwithstanding his critical philosophy, Kant wanted to
find God behind the starry heaven above us, — and behind the
voice of conscience in us an immortal soul in the image and
likeness of God.

He called these ideas postulates of practical reason and objects of
rational faith.^ But there is no faith about it, for faith cannot be
a deduction, and there is not much rationality either, for the
whole argument moves in a vicious circle : God and immortality
of the soul are deduced from morality, while morality itself
depends upon God and the immortal soul.

No certainty can attach, from Kant's point of view, to these
two metaphysical ideas themselves, but they must be admitted as
valid truths, since the reality of the moral law demands the reality
of God and immortality. Every sceptic or c critical philosopher '
has, however, a perfect right to turn this argument against Kant.
Since pure morality can only be based upon the existence of God
and of an immortal soul, and the certainty of these ideas cannot be
proved, pure morality dependent upon these ideas cannot be
proved either, and must remain a mere supposition.

If the moral law has absolute significance, it must rest upon
itself and stand in no need of * postulates,' the object of which
has been so systematically put to shame in the Critique of Pure
Reason. But if, in order to have real force, the moral law must
be based upon something other than itself, its foundations must be
independent of it and possess certainty on their own account.
The moral law cannot possibly be based upon things which have
their ground in it.

Kant rightly insisted that morality is autonomous. This
great discovery, connected with his name, will not be lost for

1 I confine myself here to these two postulates only, for the question of the freedom
of will belongs to a different order of ideas.

158 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

humanity. Morality is autonomous precisely because its essence
is not an abstract formula hanging in the air, but contains in
itself all the conditions of its realisation. The necessary presup
position of morality, namely, the existence of God and of an
immortal soul, is not a demand for something extraneous to
morality and additional to it, but is its own inner basis. God
and the soul are not the postulates of the moral law, but the direct
creative forces of the moral reality.

The fact that the good is not finally and universally realised
for us, that virtue is not always effective and never^ in our
empirical life, wholly effective, does not disprove the fact that the
good exists and that the measure of good in humanity is, on the
whole, on the increase. It is not increasing in the sense that
individual persons are becoming more virtuous or that there is a
greater number of virtuous people, but in the sense that the
average level of the universally binding moral demands that are
fulfilled is gradually raised. This is a historical fact, against which
one cannot honestly argue. What then is the source of this in
crease of good in humanity as a collective whole, independently of
the moral state of human units taken separately ? We know that
the growth of a physical organism is due to the superabundance
of nourishment which it receives from its actual physico-organic
environment, the existence of which precedes its own. In a
similar way, moral growth, which cannot logically be explained by
the physical (for such explanation would in the long run mean
deducing the greater from the lesser, or something from nothing,
which is absurd), can also only be explained by a superabundance
of nourishment, that is, by the general positive effect of the actual
moral or spiritual environment. In addition to the inconstant
and, for the most part, doubtful growth of separate human beings,
traceable to the educative effect of the social environment, there
is a constant and undoubtful spiritual growth of humanity, or of
the social environment itself — and this is the whole meaning of
history. To account for this fact we must recognise the reality
of a superhuman environment which spiritually nourishes the
collective life of humanity and, by the superabundance of this
nourishment, conditions its moral progress. And if the reality
of the superhuman good must be admitted, there is no reason to
deny its effect upon the individual moral life of man. It is clear

THE UNITY OF MORAL PRINCIPLES 159

that this higher influence extends to everything capable of receiv
ing it. The effect of the social environment must not, however,
be regarded as the source, but only as one of the necessary con
ditions of the moral life of the individual. If moral life, both
collective and personal, be understood as the interaction between
man (and humanity) and the perfect, superhuman good, it cannot
belong to the sphere of the transitory material events. In other
words, both the individual and the collective soul must be im
mortal. Immortality does not necessarily presuppose the soul as
an independent substance. Each soul can be conceived as one
of a number of inseparably connected, constant and therefore
immortal relations of the Deity to some universal substratum of
the life of the world, a closer definition of which does not directly
belong to the scope of moral philosophy. We know nothing as
yet — i.e. before a theoretical inquiry into metaphysical questions —
about the substantiality of the soul or the substantiality of God j
but one thing we know with certainty : ' As the Lord liveth, my
soul liveth.' If we give up this fundamental truth we cease to
understand and to affirm ourselves as moral beings, that is, we
give up the very meaning of our life.

NEITHER the natural inclination to the good in individual men,
nor the rational consciousness of duty, are in themselves sufficient
for the realisation of the good. But our moral nature contains
an element of something greater than itself.

Even the first two foundations of morality — shame and pity —
cannot be reduced either to a certain mental condition of this or that
person, or to a universal rational demand of duty. When a man
is ashamed of desires and actions that spring from his material
nature, he does more than express thereby his personal opinion or
the state of his mind at the given moment. He actually apprehends
a certain reality independent of his opinions or accidental moods —
the reality, namely, of the spiritual, supermaterial essence of man.
In the feeling of shame the fundamental material inclinations are
rejected by us as foreign and hostile to us. It is clear that the
person who rejects and the thing which is rejected cannot be
identical. The man who is ashamed of a material fact cannot
himself be a mere material fact. A material fact that is ashamed
of and rejects itself, that judges itself and acknowledges itself un
worthy, is an absurdity and is logically impossible.

The feeling of shame which is the basis of our right relation
to the material nature is something more than a simple psychical
fact. It is a self-evident revelation of a certain universal truth, —
of the truth, namely, that man has a spiritual supermaterial nature.
In shame, and in ascetic morality founded upon it, this spiritual
essence of man manifests itself not only as a possibility but also as
an actuality^ not as a demand only but also as a certain reality.

1 60

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 161

Men whose spirit dominates their material nature have actually
existed in the past and exist now. The fact that they are com
paratively few in number simply proves that the moral demand has
not yet been fully and finally realised ; it does not prove that it
is not realised at all and remains a mere demand. It cannot be
said that the moral principle of shame is lacking in actuality, or,
what is the same thing, in actual perfection.

In a similar manner, the feeling of pity or compassion which is
the basis of man's right relation to his fellow-beings expresses not
merely the mental condition of a given person, but also a certain
universal objective truth, namely, the unity of nature or the real
solidarity of all beings. If they were alien and external to one
another, one being could not put himself into the place of another,
could not transfer the sufferings of others to himself or feel
together with others ; for compassion is an actual and not an
imagined state, not an abstract idea. The bond of sympathy
between separate beings, which finds expression in the funda
mental feeling of pity and is developed in the morality of altruism,
is not merely a demand, but a beginning of realisation. This is
proved by the solidarity of human beings, which exists as a fact, and
increases throughout the historical development of society. The
defect of the social morality is not that it is not realised at all, but
that it is not fully and perfectly realised. The feeling of shame
gives us no theoretical conception of the spiritual principle in man,
but indubitably proves the existence of that principle. The feeling
of pity tells us nothing definite about the metaphysical nature of
the universal unity, but concretely indicates the existence of a certain
fundamental connection between distinct entities, prior to all ex
perience. And although these entities are empirically separate from
one another, they become more and more united in the empirical
reality itself.

II

In the two moral spheres indicated by shame and pity, the good
is already known as truth, and is realised in fact, but as yet im
perfectly. In the third sphere of moral relations, determined by
the religious feeling or reverence, the true object of that feeling
reveals itself as the highest or perfect good, wholly and absolutely

M

162 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

realised from all eternity. The inner basis of religion involves
more than a mere recognition of our dependence upon a power
immeasurably greater than we. Religious consciousness in its pure
form is a joyous feeling that there is a Being infinitely better than
ourselves, and that our life and destiny, like everything that exists,
is dependent upon It — not upon an irrational fate, but upon the
actual and perfect Good, the One which embraces all.

In true religious experience the reality of that which is ex
perienced is immediately given ; we are directly conscious of the
real presence of the Deity, and feel Its effect upon us. Abstract
arguments can have no force against actual experience. When
a man is ashamed of his animal desires, it is impossible to prove
to him that he is a mere animal. In the very fact of shame he is
aware of himself as being, and proves himself to be, more and
higher than an animal. When in the feeling of pity we are
affected by the sufferings of another person, and are conscious of
him as of a fellow-being, no force can attach to the theoretical
argument that perhaps that other, for whom my heart aches, is
only my presentation, devoid of all independent reality. If I am
conscious of the inner connection between myself and another,
that consciousness testifies to the actual existence of the other no
less than to my own. This conclusion holds good of the religious
feeling as well as of pity and compassion. The only difference is
that the object of the former is experienced not as equal to us but
as absolutely superior, all-embracing, and perfect. It is impossible
that a creature which excites in me a living feeling of compassion
should not actually live and suffer. It is still more impossible
that the highest, that which inspires us with reverence and fills
our soul with "unutterable bliss, should' not exist at all. We
cannot doubt the reality of that which perceptibly affects us, and
whose effect upon us is given in the very fact of the experience.
The circumstance that I do not always have the experience, and
that other people do not have it at all, no more disproves its
reality and the reality of its object than the fact of my not seeing
the sun at night, and of persons born blind never seeing it at all,
disproves the existence of the sun and of vision. Moreover,
many people have a wrong conception of the sun, taking it to be
small and to move round the earth, and this, indeed, was the
universal belief in former days. But neither the existence of the

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 163

sun nor my certainty of its existence are in the least affected
by this fact. In the same way, theological errors and con
tradictions do not in any way touch upon the real object of
religion. Theological systems, like the astronomical ones, are
the work of human intellect, and depend upon the degree of
its development and the amount of positive knowledge. Correct
theology, like correct astronomy, is important and necessary ; but
it is not a thing of the first importance. The epicycles of the
Alexandrian astronomers and the division of the solar system accord
ing to the theory of Tycho Brahe did not prevent any one from
enjoying the light and the warmth of the sun ; and when these
astronomers were proved to be in error, no one was led thereby to
doubt the actual existence of the sun and the planets. In the
same way the most false and absurd theological doctrine cannot
prevent any one from experiencing the Deity, nor cause any
doubt as to the reality of what is given in experience.

Abstract theoretical doubts had arisen in the past and still
arise, not only with regard to the existence of God, but to all
other existence. No one at all familiar with philosophical specula
tion can imagine that the existence of the physical world, or even
of our neighbours, is self-evident to the intellect. A doubt of that
existence is the first foundation of all speculative philosophy
worthy of the name. These theoretical doubts are disposed of in
one way or another by means of various epistemological and meta
physical theories. But however interesting and important these
theories may be, they have no direct bearing upon life and
practice. Such direct significance attaches to moral philosophy,
which is concerned with the actual data of our spiritual nature and
the guiding practical truths which logically follow from them.

The parallelism between spiritual and physical blindness is
also borne out by the following consideration. It is well known
that people blind from birth are perfectly sound in other respects,
and have indeed an advantage over the persons with normal sight
in that their other senses — hearing, touch — are better developed.
In a similar way persons lacking in receptivity to the divine
light are perfectly normal in all other respects, both practical
and theoretical, and, indeed, they generally prove superior to
others in their capacity for business and for learning. It is
natural that a person who is particularly drawn to the absolute

164 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

centre of the universe cannot pay equal attention to objects that
are relative. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that in the
special, worldly tasks of humanity, a great share of work and of
success falls to the men for whom the higher world is closed.
Such c division of labour ' is natural, and it provides a certain
teleological explanation of atheism which must serve some
positive good purpose "on the whole, whatever its negative causes
in each particular case may be. If the work of history is
necessary, if the union of mankind is to become a fact,
if it is necessary that at a given epoch men should invent
and make all sorts of machines, dig the Suez Canal, discover
unknown lands, etc., then it is also necessary for the successful
performance of all these tasks that some men should not be
mystics, or even earnest believers. It is clear, of course, that the
supreme will does not make any one an atheist for the sake of its
historical purposes ; but once the complex chain of causes,
finally confirmed by this or that voluntary decision of the man
himself, has produced in a given case spiritual blindness, it is the
business of Providence to give such a direction to this ' ill ' that
it too should be not wholly devoid of 'good' — that a subjective
wrong should have an objective justification.

Ill

The reality of the Deity is not a deduction from religious
experience but the content of it — that which is experienced. If
this immediate reality of the higher principle be taken away,
there would be nothing left of religious experience. It would
no longer exist. But it does exist, and therefore that which is
given and experienced in it exists also. God is in us, therefore
He is.

However complete the feeling of our inner unity with God
may be, it never becomes a consciousness of mere identity, of
simple merging into one. The feeling of unity is inseparably
connected with the consciousness that the Deity with which we
are united, and which acts and reveals itself in us, is something
distinct and independent of us — that it is prior to us, higher and
greater than we. God exists on His own account. That which
is experienced is logically prior to any given experience. The

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 165

actuality of an object does not depend upon the particular way
in which it acts. When one has to say to a person ' there is no
God in youj every one understands that this is not a denial of the
Deity, but merely a recognition of the moral worthlessness of the
person in whom there is no room for God, i.e. no inner
receptivity to the action of God. And this conclusion would
stand even if we had to admit that all men were thus
impenetrable to the Deity.

My compassion for another person does not in the least
imply that I am identical with that other. It simply means that
I am of the same nature as he is and that there is a bond of
union between us. In the same way, the religious experience
of God in us or of ourselves in God by no means implies that
He is identical with us, but simply proves our inner relationship
to Him — 'for we are also His offspring.' The relation is not
brotherly, as with our fellow-beings, but filial — it is not the bond
of equality, but the bond of dependence. The dependence is not
external or accidental, but inward and essential. True religious
feeling regards the Deity as the fulness of all the conditions of
our life — as that without which life would be senseless and
impossible for us, as \\\& first beginning, as the true medium, and as
the final end of existence. Since everything is already contained
in God we can add nothing to Him from ourselves, no new
content ; we cannot make the absolute perfection more perfect.
But we can partake of it more and more, be united with it more
and more closely. Thus our relation to the Deity is that of
form to content.

A further analysis of what in religious feeling is given as a
living experience of the reality of Godhead shows that we stand
in a threefold relation to this perfect reality, this absolute or
supreme good, (i) We are conscious of our difference from it ;
and since it contains the fulness of perfection, we can only differ
from it by negative qualities or determinations — by our im
perfection, impotence, wickedness, suffering. In this respect
we are the opposite of the Deity, its negative other ; this is the
lower earthly principle out of which man is created (his vX-rj or
causa materialis\ that which is called in the Bible 'the dust of
the ground ' (gaphar haadam}. (2) But although we are nothing
but a complex of all possible imperfections, we are conscious of

166 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the absolute perfection as of that which truly is, and in this
consciousness are ideally united to it, reflect it in ourselves.
This idea of the all-embracing perfection as the informing
principle of our life (eiSos, causa forma/is) is, in the words of the
Bible, 'the image of God' in us (or, more exactly, 'the reflection':
zelem from z*7, 'shadow'). (3) In God the ideal perfection is
fully realised ; hence we are not content with being conscious
of Him as an idea, or in reflecting Him in ourselves, but want,
like God, to be actually perfect. And since our empirical
existence is opposed to this, we seek to transform, to perfect
our bad reality, and to assimilate it to the absolute ideal.
Thus although in our given (or inherited) condition we are
opposed to the Deity, we approximate to It in that towards
which we aspire. The end of our life, that for the sake of
which we exist (ov eye/cci, causa finalis\ is the 'likeness of God'
(fmut).

The religious attitude necessarily involves discriminating and
comparing. We can stand in a religious relation to the higher
only if we are aware of it as such, only if we are conscious of its
superiority to us, and consequently of our own unworthiness.
But we cannot be conscious of our unworthiness or imperfection
unless we have an idea of its opposite — i.e. an idea of perfection.
Further, the consciousness of our own imperfection and of the
divine perfection cannot, if it be genuine, stop at this opposition.
It necessarily results in a desire to banish it by making our
reality conform to the highest ideal, that is, to the image and
likeness of God. Thus the religious attitude as a whole logically
involves three moral categories : (i) irnperfection (in us) ; (2)
perfection (in God) ; and (3) the process of becoming perfect or
of establishing a harmony between the first and the second as the
task of our life.

IV

The logical analysis of the religious attitude into its three
component elements finds confirmation both from the psycho
logical and the formally moral point of view.

Psychologically, i.e. as a subjective state, the typical religious
attitude finds expression in the feeling of reverence, or, more

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 167

exactly, of reverent love.1 This feeling necessarily involves (i) self-
depreciation on the part of the person who experiences it, or his
disapproval of himself as he actually is at the present moment ; (2) Jft/*
positive awareness of the higher ideal as of a reality of a different
order, as of that which truly is — since to feel reverence for what
one knows to be an invention or an image of fancy is psychologic
ally impossible ; (3) a striving to work a real change in oneself, and
to draw nearer to the highest perfection. Apart from this striving
the religious feeling becomes an abstract idea. On the contrary,
real striving towards God is the beginning of union with Him.
By experiencing His reality in ourselves we become united to this
supreme reality, and make a beginning — an inner and subjective
one — of the future complete union of all the world with God.
This is the reason why the true religious attitude is characterised
by the feeling of bliss and enthusiasm, which the Apostle calls
"the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts" and "joy of the Holy
Ghost." It is the prophetic spirit anticipating our complete and
final union with the Deity : the union is not yet attained but it
has begun, and we have a foretaste of the joy of fulfilment.

From the formally moral point of view, the consciousness
(involved in the religious feeling) that the supreme ideal actually
exists and that we are out of harmony with it compels us to become
more perfect. That which excites our reverence, affirms thereby
its right to our devotion. And if we are conscious of the actual
and absolute superiority of the Deity over ourselves, our devotion
to it must be real and unlimited, i.e. it must be the unconditional
rule of our life.

The religious feeling expressed in the form of the categorical
imperative commands us not merely to desire perfection but to be
perfect. And this means that, in addition to having a good will,
being honest, well-behaved and virtuous, we must be free from
pain, immortal and incorruptible, and must, moreover, make all
our fellow-beings morally perfect and free from pain, deathless,
and incorruptible in their bodies. For, indeed, true perfection
must embrace the whole of man, must include all his reality — and
of that reality other beings, too, form part. If we do not want

1 This subjective basis of religion is best rendered by the German Ehrfurcht,
chrfurchtsvolle Liebe. It may also be called an ascending love, amor ascendent. See
the conclusion of this book.

1 68 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

that, in addition to moral perfection, they should be free from pain,
immortal and incorruptible, we have no pity for them, that is, we
are inwardly imperfect. And if we want it, but cannot do it, we
are impotent, that is, our inner perfection is not sufficient to
manifest itself objectively ; it is merely a subjective, incomplete
perfection, or, in other words, it is imperfection. In either case
we have not fulfilled the demand, " Be ye perfect."

But what can the demand mean ? It is clear that by willing
alone, however pure and intense the will may be, we cannot even —
contrary to the claim of ' mental healing ' — save ourselves or our
neighbours from toothache or gout, let alone raise the dead.

The imperative c be ye perfect ' does not refer, then, to separate
acts of will, but puts before us a life-long task. A simple act of
pure will is necessary for accepting the task, but is not in itself
sufficient for fulfilling it. The process of becoming perfect is a
necessary means to perfection. Thus the unconditional demand
c be perfect ' means, in fact, ( become perfect?

Perfection, i.e. the completeness of good, or the unity of
good and happiness, expresses itself in three ways: (i) as the
absolutely real, eternally actual perfection in God ; (2) as
potential perfection in human consciousness which contains the
absolute fulness of being in the form of an idea, and in human
will which makes that fulness of being its ideal and its norm ;
(3) as the actual realisation of perfection or as the historical pro
cess of becoming perfect.

The adherents of abstract morality put at this point a question,
the answer to which they prejudge from the first. They ask
what need is there for this third aspect — for perfection as con
cretely realised, for historical doing with its political problems and
its work of civilisation. If the light of truth and a pure will is
within us, why trouble about anything further ?

But the purpose of historical doing is precisely the final justifi
cation of the good given in our true consciousness and our good
will. The historical process as a whole creates the concrete
conditions under which the good may really become common
property, and apart from which it cannot be realised. The whole

of historical development, both of the human and of the physical
world, is the necessary means to perfection. No one will argue
that a mollusc or a sponge can know the truth, or bring their
will into harmony with the absolute good. It was necessary
for more and more complex and refined organic forms to be
evolved until a form was produced in which the consciousness of
perfection and the desire for it could be manifested. This con
sciousness and desire contain, however, only the possibility of
perfection ; and if man is conscious of and desires that which he
does not possess, it is clear that the consciousness and the will
cannot be the completion, but are only the beginning of his life
and activity. A speck of living protoplasm, the production of
which also demanded much creative energy, contains the possi
bility of the human organism. But that possibility could only
be realised through a long and complex biological process. A
formless bit of organic matter, or an insufficiently formed living
being like a sponge, a polypus, a cuttle-fish, cannot of themselves
produce man, though they contain him potentially. In the same
way a formless horde of savages, or an insufficiently formed
barbarian state, cannot directly give birth to the Kingdom of God,
that is, to the image of the perfect unity of the human and the
universal life — even though the remote possibility of such unity
may be contained in the thoughts and feelings of the savages and
barbarians.

Just as the spirit of man in nature requires for its concrete
expression the most perfect of physical organisms, so the spirit of
God in humanity or the Kingdom of God requires for its actual
manifestation the most perfect social body which is being slowly
evolved through history. In so far as the ultimate constituents of
this historical process — human individuals — are more capable of
conscious and free action than the ultimate constituents of the
biological process — the organic cells — the process of evolving the
collective universal body is more conscious and voluntary in
character than the organic processes which determine the evolu
tion of our corporeal being. But there is no absolute opposition
between the two. On the one hand, rudiments of consciousness
and will are undoubtedly present in all living beings, though
they are not a decisive factor in the general process of perfecting
the organic forms. On the other hand, the course and the final

i yo THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

outcome of universal history are not exhausted by the conscious
and purposive activity of historical persons. But in any case, at
a certain level of intellectual and moral development the human
individual must inevitably determine his own attitude with
regard to the problems of history.

The significance of the historical, as distinct from the
cosmical, process lies in the fact that the part played in it by
individual agents is always increasing in importance. And it is
strange that at the present day, when this characteristic fact of
history has become sufficiently clear, the assertion should be
made that man must renounce all historical doing, and that the
state of perfection for humanity and for all the universe will
be attained of itself. 'Of itself does not, of course, in this
connection mean through the play of blind physical forces
which have neither the desire nor the power to create the
Kingdom of God out of themselves. 'Of itself here means by
the immediate action of God. But how are we to explain from
this point of view the fact that hitherto God has never acted
immediately ? If for the realisation of the perfect life two
principles only are necessary — God and the human soul, poten
tially receptive of Him — then the Kingdom of God might have
been established with the advent of the first man. What was the
need for all these centuries and millenniums of human history ?
And if this process was necessary because the Kingdom of God
can as little be revealed among wild cannibals as among wild
beasts, if it was necessary for humanity to work up from the
brutal and formless condition of separateness to definite organisa
tion and unity, it is as clear as day that this process is not yet
completed. Historical doing is as necessary to-day as it was
yesterday, and will be as necessary to-morrow, until the conditions
are ripe for the actual and perfect realisation of the Kingdom of
God.

VI

The historical process is a long and difficult transition from
the bestial man to the divine man. No one can seriously
maintain that the last step has already been taken, that the
image and likeness of the beast has been inwardly abolished in
humanity and replaced by the image and likeness of God, that

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 171

there is no longer any historical task left demanding the
organised activity of social groups, and that all we have to do is
to bear witness to this fact and trouble no further. This view
when expressed simply and directly is absurd, and yet it sums up
the doctrine so often preached nowadays of social disruption and
individual quietism — a doctrine which claims to be the expression
of the unconditional principle of morality.

The unconditional principle of morality cannot be a deception.
But it is obvious deception for a separate individual to pretend
that his own impotence to realise the ideal of universal perfection
proves such realisation to be unnecessary. The truth which, on
the basis of genuine religious feeling, our reason and our con
science tell us is this : —

I cannot alone carry out in practice all that ought to be ;
I cannot do anything alone. But, thank God, there is no such
thing as c I alone ' ; my impotence and isolation is only a
subjective state which depends upon myself. Although in my
thoughts and my will I can separate myself from everything, it is
mere self-deception. Apart from these false thoughts and this
bad will nothing exists separately, everything is inwardly and
externally connected.

I am not alone. With me is God Almighty and the world —
that is, all that is contained in God. And if both these exist, there
is positive interaction between them. The very idea of Godhead
implies that things to which God stands in a purely negative
relation, or things to which He is unconditionally opposed,
cannot exist at all. But the world does exist, therefore there
must be the positive activity of God in it. The world cannot,
however, be the end of that activity, for it is imperfect. And if
it cannot be the end, it must be the means. It is the system of
conditions for realising the kingdom of ends. That in it which
is capable of perfection will enter that kingdom with full rights ;
all the rest is the material and the means for bringing it about.
All that exists, exists only in virtue of being approved by God.
But God approves in two ways : some things are good as a
means and others as a purpose and an end (shabbath}. Each
stage in the world creation is approved of from above, but the
Scriptures distinguish between simple and enhanced praise. Of
all things created in the first six days of the world it says that

172 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

they are good (tob^ /caAa), but only the last creature — man — is
said to be very good (tob meod^ KaXa Ai'av). In another holy
book it is said that the Divine Wisdom looks after all creatures,
but that her joy is in the sons of man. In man's consciousness
and his freedom lies the inner possibility for each human being
to stand in an independent relation to God, and therefore to
be His direct purpose, to be a citizen possessed of full rights in
the kingdom of ends. Universal history is the realisation of this
possibility for every one. Man who takes part in it attains to
actual perfection through his own experience, through his inter
action with other men. This perfection attained by himself,
this full, conscious, and free union with Godhead, is what God
wills for its own sake — is an unconditional good. Inner
freedom, i.e. voluntary and conscious preference of good to evil in
everything, is, from the point of view of principle, the chief
condition of this perfection or of the absolute good (tob meod}.

Man is dear to God, not as a passive instrument of His will —
there are enough of such instruments to be found in the physical
world — but as a voluntary ally and participator in His work in
the universe. This participation of man must necessarily be
included in the very purpose of God's activity in the world.
Were this purpose thinkable apart from human activity, it would
have been attained from all eternity, for in God Himself there can
be no process of becoming perfect, but only an eternal and un
changeable fulness of all that is good. Just as it is unthinkable
for an absolute being to increase in goodness or perfection, so it
is unthinkable for man to attain perfection at once, apart from
the process of becoming perfect. 'Perfection is not a thing which
one person can make a gift of to another ; it is an inner condition
attainable through one's own experience alone. No doubt perfec
tion, like every positive content of life, is received by man from
God. But in order to be capable of receiving it, in order to
become a receptive form for the divine content (and it is in this
alone that human perfection consists), it is necessary that man
should through actual experience get rid of and be purged of all
that is incompatible with this perfect state. For mankind as a
whole this is attained through the historical process, by means of
which God's will is realised in the world.

This will reveals itself to the individual — not of course as he

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 173

is in his false separateness, but as he truly is. And man's true
nature consists not in separating himself from all else, but in
being together with all that is.

VII

The moral duty of religion demands that we should unite our
will with the will of God. The will of God is all-embracing, and
in being united to it, or in entering into true harmony with it,
we obtain an absolute and universal rule of action. The idea of
God that reason deduces from what is given in true religious
experience is so clear and definite that we always can know, if
we want to, what God demands of us. In the first place, God
wants us to be conformable to and like Him. We must manifest
our inner kinship with the Deity, our power and determination
to attain free perfection. This idea can be expressed in the form
of the following rule : Have God in you.

A man who has God in him regards everything in accordance
with God's thought or * from the point of view of the absolute.'
The second rule, then, is Regard everything in God's way.

God's relation to everything is not indifference. Inanimate
objects are indifferent to good and evil, but this lower state cannot
be attributed to the Deity. Although, according to the words of
the Gospel, God lets the sun shine on the just and the unjust, it
is precisely this single light which, in illuminating different persons
and actions, shows the difference between them. Although,
according to the same words, God sends His rain to the righteous
and to the sinners, yet this one and the same moisture of God's
grace brings forth from the different soil and different seed fruits
that are not identical. God cannot be said either to affirm evil or
to deny it unconditionally. The first is impossible, because in
that case evil would be good, and the second is impossible, because
in that case evil could not exist at all — and yet it does exist.
God denies evil as final or abiding, and in virtue of this denial it
perishes. But He permits it as a transitory condition of freedom^ i.e.
of a greater good. On the one hand, God permits evil inasmuch as a
direct denial or annihilation of it would violate human freedom and
be a greater evil, for it would render perfect (i.e. free) good impossible
in the world ; on the other hand, God permits evil inasmuch as it

174 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

is possible for His Wisdom to extract from evil a greater good or
the greatest possible perfection, and this is the cause of the existence
of evil.1 Evil, then, is something subservient, and an unconditional
rejection of it would be wrong. We must regard evil also in God's
way, i.e. without being indifferent to it, we must rise above absolute
opposition to it and allow it — when it does not proceed from us
— as a means of perfection, in so far as a greater good can be
derived from it. We must recognise the possibility, i.e. the
potentiality, of good in all that is, and must work for that
possibility to become an actuality. The direct possibility of
perfect good is given in rational and free beings like ourselves.
Recognising our own unconditional significance as bearers of the
consciousness of the absolute ideal (the image of God), and of the
striving to realise it completely (the likeness of God), we must in
justice recognise the same thing of all other persons. Our duty
of attaining perfection we must regard not merely as the task of
the individual life, but as an inseparable part of the world-wide
work of history.

The unconditional principle of morality can therefore be
expressed as follows : —

In complete inner harmony with the higher will and recognising
the absolute worth or significance of all other persons, since they too are
in the image and likeness of God, participate, as fully as in thee lies,
in the work of making thyself and every one more perfect, so that the
Kingdom of God may be finally revealed in the world.

VIII

It will be easily seen that the unconditional principle of
morality includes and gives expression to all positive moral
principles, and that at the same time it completely satisfies the
natural demand for happiness in the sense of possessing the
highest good.

In demanding that man should be a friend and helper of God,
the unconditional principle of morality does not cancel the
particular moral demands. On the contrary, it confirms them ;

1 I must content myself here with a general logical reflection. A real solution of
the question must be based upon a metaphysical inquiry into the nature of God and the
origin of evil in the world.

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 175

it puts them in a higher light and gives them a supreme

sanction.

In the first place, it refers to the religious basis of morality, of
which it is the direct development and the final expression. The
higher demand presupposes the lower. A babe at the breast
naturally cannot be his father's friend and helper. In the same
way, a man spiritually under age is inwardly precluded from
standing in the relation of free and immediate harmony with
God. In both cases authoritative guidance and education is
necessary. This is the justification of external religious institu
tions — of sacrifices, hierarchy, etc. Apart from their profound
mystical significance, which makes them an abiding link between
heaven and earth, they are undoubtedly of the first importance
to humanity from the pedagogical point of view. There never
was, and never could be, a time when all men would be spiritually
equal to one another. Making use of this inevitable inequality,
Providence has from the first elected the best to be the spiritual
teachers of the crowd. Of course the inequality was merely
relative — the teachers of savages were half-savage themselves.
Therefore the character of religious institutions changes and
becomes more perfect in conformity with the general course of
history. But so long as the historical process is not yet com
pleted, no one could in all conscience consider unnecessary for
himself and for others the mediation of religious institutions
which connect us v/ith the work of God that has already found
concrete embodiment in history. And even if such a man could
be found, he would certainly not reject the c external ' side of
religion. Indeed for him it would not be merely external^ for he
would understand the fulness of the inner meaning inherent in it
and its connection with the future realisation of that meaning.
A person who is above school age and has reached the heights of
learning has certainly no reason to go to school. But he has still
less reason to reject schools and to persuade the schoolboys that
their teachers are a pack of idle swindlers, and that they themselves
are perfect men or that educational institutions are the root of all
evil and ought to be wiped off the face of the earth.

The true c friend of God ' understands and cares for all mani
festations of the divine both in the physical world and, still more
so, in human history. And if he stands on one of the upper

:76 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

rungs of the ladder that leads from man to God, he will certainly
not cut down the lower rungs on which his brethren are standing
and which are still supporting him too.

Religious feeling raised to the level of an absolute and all-
embracing principle of life lifts to the same height the other two
fundamental moral feelings, as well as the duties that follow from
them — namely, the feeling of pity which determines our right
relation to our fellow-creatures, and the feeling of shame upon
which our right attitude to the lower material nature is based.

IX

Pity which we feel towards a fellow-being acquires another
significance when we see in that being the image and likeness of
God. We then recognise the unconditional worth of that person ;
we recognise that he is an end in himself for God, and still more
must be so for us. We realise that God Himself does not treat
him merely as a means. We respect that being since God respects
him^ or, more exactly, we consider him since God considers him.
This higher point of view does not exclude pity in cases when it
would naturally be felt — on the contrary, pity becomes more
P9Jgnarit- and_profound. I pity in that being not merely his
sufferings but also the cause of them — I regret that his actual
reality falls so short of his true dignity and possible perfection.
The duty that follows from the altruistic sentiment also acquires
a higher meaning. We can no longer be content with refraining
from injuries to our neighbour or even with assisting him in his
troubles. We must help him- to become more perfect, so that
the image and likeness of God which we recognise in him might
be actually realised. But no human being can alone realise either
in himself or in any one else that absolute fulness of perfec
tion in seeking which we are likened to God. Altruism at its
highest religious stage compels us, therefore, actively to participate
in the universal historical process which brings about the con
ditions necessary for the revelation of the Kingdom of God. Con
sequently it demands that we should take part in the collective
organisations — especially in that of the state as inclusive of all the
others — by means of which the historical process is, by the will
of Providence, carried on. Not every one is called to political

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 177

activity or to the service of the state in the narrow sense of the
term. But it is the duty of every one to serve, in his own place,
that same purpose — the common good — which the state ought
to serve also.

In the domain of religion the unconditional principle of
morality leads us to accept ecclesiastical institutions and traditions
as educational means whereby humanity is led in the end to
ultimate perfection. In a similar way in the domain of purely
human relations inspired by pity and altruism the unconditional
moral principle demands that we should give active service
to the collective organisations, such as the state, by means of
which Providence prevents humanity from material disruption,
holds it together, and enables it to become more perfect.
We know that only in virtue of that which has been and is
being given to humanity by the historical forms of religion
can we truly attain to that free and perfect union with the
Divine, the possibility and the promise of which are contained
in our inner religious feeling. Similarly, we know that apart
from the concentrated and organised social force which is found
in the state we cannot give all our neighbours that help which
we are bidden to give both by the simple moral feeling of
pity for their sufferings and by the religious principle of respect
for their unconditional dignity which demands to be realised.

In both cases we connect our allegiance to the ecclesiastical
and the political forms of social life with the unconditional
principle of morality, and in doing so we recognise that allegiance
as conditional^ as determined by this higher truth and dependent
upon it. Institutions which ought to serve the good in humanity
may more or less deviate from their purpose or even be wholly false
to it. In that case the duty of man true to the good consists neither
in entirely rejecting the institutions in question on the ground of
the abuses connected with them — which would be unjust — nor in
blindly submitting to them both in good and in evil, which would
be impious and unworthy. His duty would be to try and actively
reform the institutions, insisting on what their function ought to
be. If we know why and for what sake we ought to submit to a
certain institution, we also know the form and the measure ot
such submission. It will never become unlimited, blind, and
slavish. We shall never be passive and senseless instruments of

N

1 78 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

external forces ; we shall never put the Church in the place of
God, or the state in the place of humanity. We shall not take
the transitory forms and instruments of the providential work in
history for the essence and the purpose of that work. We sub
ordinate our personal impotence and insufficiency to the historical
forces, but in our higher consciousness we regard them in God's
way, using them as the means or the conditions of the perfect
good. In doing so we do not renounce our human dignity —
rather we affirm it and realise it as unconditional.

When I make use of physical force and move my arms in
order to save a drowning man or to give food to the hungry,
I do not in any way detract from my moral dignity ; on the
contrary, I increase it. Why then should it be a detriment,
rather than a gain, to our morality to take advantage of the
spiritually-material forces of the state and use them for the good
of nations and of humanity as a whole ? To submit to material
powers is shameful, but to deny their right to existence is perilous
and unjust. In any case the unconditional principle of morality
extends to the domain of matter also.

X

The natural feeling of shame bears witness to the autonomy
of our being, and safeguards its wholeness from the destructive
intrusion of foreign elements. At the lower stages of develop
ment, when sensuous life predominates, special significance
attaches to bodily chastity, and the feeling of shame is originally
connected with this side of life. But as moral feelings and
relations are developed further, man begins to form a wider
conception of his dignity. He is ashamed not only of yielding to
the lower material nature, but also of all violations of duty in
relation to gods and men. The unconscious instinct of shame
becomes now, as we have seen, the clear voice of conscience which
reproaches man not for carnal sins alone but also for all wrong
doing — for all unjust and pitiless actions and feelings. At the
same time there is developed a special feeling of the fear of God,
which restrains us from coming into conflict with anything that
expresses for us the holiness of God. When the relation between
man and God is raised to the level of absolute consciousness, the

UNCONDITIONAL PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY 179

feeling which protects the wholeness of man is also raised to a new
and final stage. What is now being safeguarded is not the relative
but the absolute dignity of man, that is, his ideal perfection which
is to be realised. The negative voice of shame, conscience, and the
fear of God becomes at this stage a direct and positive conscious
ness in man of his own divinity or a consciousness of God in him.
This consciousness no longer reproaches him for doing what is
bad and injurious, but for feeling and acting as an imperfect being,
while perfection is his duty and his goal. Instead of the demon
which restrained Socrates from wrong actions, we hear the Divine
voice : " Be ye perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect."
If perfection is to be perfectly realised it must include the
material life. The unconditional principle gives a new mean
ing to the ascetic morality. We refrain from carnal sins no
longer out of the instinct of spiritual self-preservation or for the
sake of increasing our inner power, but for the sake of our body
itself, as the uttermost limit of the manifestation of God in man,
as the predestined abode of the Holy Ghost.

CHAPTER III

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER
I

THE unconditional principle of morality, logically involved in
religious experience, contains the complete good (or the right
relation of all to everything) not merely as a demand or an idea,
but as an actual power that can fulfil this demand and create
the perfect moral order or the Kingdom of God in which the
absolute significance of every being is realised. It is by virtue of
this supreme principle alone that the moral good can give us final
and complete satisfaction, can be for us a true blessing and a
source of infinite bliss.

We experience the reality of God not as something in
definitely divine — Sai/j.6vi6v ™, but we are conscious of Him as He
really is, all-perfect or absolute. And our soul too is revealed to
us in our inner experience not merely as something distinct from
material facts, but as a positive force which struggles with the
material processes and overcomes them. The experience of
physiological asceticism does more than support the truth that the
soul is immortal — a postulate beyond which Kant would not go ;
it also justifies the hope of the resurrection of the body. For in
the triumph of the spirit over matter, as we know from our own
preliminary and rudimentary experience, matter is not destroyed
but is made eternal as the image of a spiritual quality and an
instrument of the activity of the spirit.

We do not know from experience what matter is in itself;
this is a subject for metaphysical investigation. The psychical
and the physical phenomena are qualitatively distinct so far as
knowledge is concerned : the first are known by direct intro-

180

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 181

spection and the second by means of the outer senses. But
experience — both the immediate individual and the universal,
scientific, and historical experience — undoubtedly proves that in
spite of this there is no gulf between the real essence of the
spiritual and the material nature, that the two are most intimately
connected and constantly interact. Since the process whereby
the universe attains perfection is the process of manifesting
God in man, it must also be the process of manifesting God in
matter.

The chief concrete stages of this process, given in our
experience, bear the traditional and significant name of kingdoms.
It is significant because it really is applicable only to the last and
highest stage, which is usually not taken into account at all.
Counting this highest stage there are five kingdoms altogether :
the mineral (or, more generally, the inorganic) kingdom, the
vegetable kingdom, the animal kingdom,, the human kingdom^and
God's kingdom. Minerals, plants, animals, natural humanity and
spiritual humanity — such are the typical forms of existence from
the point of view of the ascending process of universal perfection.
From other points of view the number of these forms and stages
might be increased, or, on the contrary, be reduced to four, three,
and two. Plants and animals may be grouped together into one
organic world. Or the whole realm of physical existence, both
organic and inorganic, may be united in the one conception of
nature. In that case there would be a threefold division only,
into the Divine, the human, and the natural kingdoms. Finally,
one may stop at the simple opposition between the Kingdom of
God and the kingdom of this world.

Without in the least rejecting these and all other divisions, it
must be admitted that the five kingdoms indicated above represent
the most characteristic and clearly defined grades of existence from
the point of view of the moral meaning realised in the process
of manifesting God in matter.

Stones and metals are distinguished from all else by their
extreme self-sufficiency and conservatism ; had it rested with
them, nature would never have wakened from her dreamless
slumber. But, on the other hand, without them her further
growth would have been deprived of a firm basis or ground.
Plants in unconscious, unbroken dreams draw towards warmth,

1 82 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

light, and moisture. Animals by means of sensations and free
movements seek the fulness of sensuous being : repletion, sexual
satisfaction, and the joy of existence (their games and singing).
Natural humanity, in addition to all these things, rationally strives
to improve its life by means of sciences, arts, and social institu
tions, actually improves it in various respects, and finally rises to
the idea of absolute perfection. Spiritual humanity or humanity
born of God not only understands this absolute perfection with
the intellect but accepts it in its heart and its conduct as the
true beginning of that which must be fulfilled in all things. It
seeks to realise it to the end and to embody it in the life of the
universe.

Each preceding kingdom serves as the immediate basis of the
one that follows. Plants derive their nourishment from inorganic
substances, animals exist at the expense of the vegetable kingdom,
men live at the expense of animals, and the Kingdom of God is
composed of men. If we consider an organism from the point
of view of its material constituents we shall find in it nothing
but elements of inorganic substance. That substance, however,
ceases to be a mere substance in so far as it enters into the plan of
the organic life, which makes use of the chemical and physical
properties of substance but is not reducible to them. In a similar
way, human life on its material side consists of animal processes,
which, however, have in it no significance on their own account
as they do in the animal world. They serve as a means or an
instrument for new purposes and new objects which follow
from the new, higher plan of rational or human life. The sole
purpose of the typical animal is satisfaction of hunger and of
the sexual instinct. But when a human being desires nothing
further he is rightly called bestial, not only as a term of abuse,
but precisely in the sense of sinking to a lower level of existence.
Just as a living organism consists of chemical substances which
cease to be mere substances, so humanity consists of animals
which cease to be merely animal. Similarly, the Kingdom of
God consists of men who have ceased to be merely human and
form part of a new and higher plan of existence in which their
purely-human ends become the means and instruments for another
final purpose.

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 183

II

The stone exists ; the plant exists and is living ; the animal
lives and is conscious of its life in its concrete states ; man under
stands the meaning of life according to ideas ; the sons of God
actively realise this meaning or the perfect moral order in all
things to the end.

The stone exists, this is clear from its sensible effect upon us.
A person who denies it can easily convince himself of his error,
as has been observed long ago, by knocking his head against
the stone.1 Stone is the most typical embodiment of the category
of being as such, and, in contradistinction to Hegel's abstract idea
of being, it shows no inclination whatever to pass into its
opposite : 2 a stone is what it is and has always been the symbol
of changeless being. It merely exists — // does not live and it does
not die, for the parts into which it is broken up do not qualitatively
differ from the whole.3 The plant not merely exists but lives,
which is proved by the fact that it dies. Life does not presuppose
death, but death obviously presupposes life. There is a clear and
essential difference between a growing tree and logs of wood,
between a fresh and a faded flower — a difference to which there
is nothing corresponding in the mineral kingdom.

1 Kant rightly points out that this argument is insufficient for theoretical philosophy ;
and when dealing with the theory of knowledge I propose to discuss the question as to
the being of things. But in moral philosophy the above argument is sufficient, for in all
contciencc it is convincing.

8 It will be remembered that in Hegel's Dialectic pure being passes into pure
nothing. In answer to a learned critic, I would like to observe that although I regard
the stone as the most typical embodiment and symbol of unchanging being, I do not in
the least identify the stone with the category of being and do not deny the mechanical
and physical properties of the concrete stone. Every one, for instance, takes the pig
to be the most typical embodiment and symbol of the moral category of unrestrained
carnality, which is on that account called ' piggishness.' But in doing so no one denies
that a real pig has in addition to its piggishness four legs, two eyes, etc.

3 I am speaking here of the stone as the most characteristic and concrete instance
of inorganic bodies in general. Such a body taken in isolation hag no real life of its own.
But this in no way prejudges the metaphysical question as to the life of nature in
general or of the more or less complex natural wholes such as the sea, rivers, mountains,
forests. And indeed, separate inorganic bodies too, such as stones, though devoid of
life on their own account, may serve as constant mediums for the localised living
activity of spiritual beings. Of this nature were the sacred stones — the so-called bethels
or bethils (houses of God) which were associated with the presence and activity of angeU
or Divine powers that seemed to inhabit these stones.

1 84 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

It is as impossible to deny life to plants as to deny consciousness
to animals. It can only be done with the help of an arbitrary
and artificial terminology, which is not binding upon any one.
According to the natural meaning of the word, consciousness in
general is a definite and regular correspondence or interrelation
between the inner psychical life of a given being and its
external environment. Such correlation is undoubtedly present in
animals. The presence of life in the vegetable kingdom is clearly
seen in the distinction between a living and a dead plant ; the
presence of consciousness in animals is, at any rate in the case of
the higher and typical animals, clearly seen in the distinction
between a sleeping and a waking animal. For the distinction
consists precisely in the fact that a waking animal consciously
takes part in the life that surrounds it, while the psychical world
of a sleeping animal is cut off from direct communication with
that life.1 An animal not merely has sensations and images j it
connects them by means of correct associations. And although
it is the interests and the impressions of the present moment that
predominate in its life, it remembers its past states and foresees the
future ones. If this were not the case, the education or training
of animals would be impossible, yet such training is a fact. No
one will deny memory to a horse or a dog. But to remember a
thing or to be conscious of it is one and the same. To deny
consciousness to animals is merely an aberration of the human
consciousness in some philosophers.

One fact of comparative anatomy ought alone to be sufficient
to disprove this crude error. To deny consciousness to animals
means to reduce the whole of thei'r life to the blind promptings of
instinct. But how are we to explain in that case the gradual
development in the higher animals of the organ of conscious mental
activity — the brain ? How could this organ have appeared and
developed if the animals in question had no corresponding
functions ? Unconscious, instinctive life does not need the
bnain. This is shown by the fact that the development of instinct

1 The usual ways in which an animal becomes conscious of his environment are
closed in sleep. But this does not by any means exclude the possibility of a different
environment and of other means of mental correlation, i.e. of another sphere of conscious
ness. In that case, however, the periodical transition of a given mental life from one
sphere of consciousness into another would prove still more clearly the general conscious
character of that life.

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 185

is prior to the appearance of that organ, and that it reaches its
highest development in creatures that have no brain. The
excellence of ants' and bees' social, hunting, and constructive
instincts depends of course not on the brain, which, strictly speak
ing, they have not got, but upon their well-developed sympathetic
nervous system.

Man differs from animals not by being conscious, since the
same is true of them also, but by possessing reason or the
faculty of forming general concepts and ideas. The presence of
consciousness in animals is proved by their purposive movements,
mimicry, and their language of various sounds. The fundamental
evidence of the rationality of man is the word^ which expresses not
only the states of a particular consciousness, but the general mean
ing of all things. The ancient wisdom rightly defined man not
as a conscious being — which is not enough — but as a being
endowed with language or a rational being.

The power inherent in the very nature of reason and of
language to grasp the all-embracing and all-uniting truth has
acted in many different ways in various and separate peoples,
gradually building up the human kingdom upon the basis of the
animal life. The ultimate essence of this human kingdom is the
ideal demand for the perfect moral order, i.e. a demand for the
Kingdom of God. By two paths — of prophetic inspiration among
the Jews, and of philosophic thought among the Greeks — has the
human spirit approached the idea of the Kingdom of God, and
the ideal of the God-man.1 Parallel to this double inner process,
but naturally more slow than it, was the external process of bringing
about political unity and unity of culture among the chief historical
peoples of East and West, completed by the Roman Empire. In
Greece and Rome natural or pagan humanity reached its limit.
In the beautiful sensuous form and speculative idea among the
Greeks, and in the practical reason, will, or power among the
Romans, it has affirmed its absolute divine significance. There
arose the idea of the absolute man or man-god. This idea cannot,
from its very nature, remain abstract or purely speculative. It
demands embodiment. But it is as impossible for man to make

1 Both these paths — the Biblical and the philosophical — coincided in the mind of the
Alexandrian Jew Philo, who is, from this point of view, the last and the most significant
thinker of antiquity.

1 86 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

himself a god as it is impossible for animals by their own efforts
to attain human dignity, rationality, and power of speech. Re
maining upon its own level of development, animal nature could
only produce the ape, and human nature — the Roman Caesar. Just
as the ape is the forerunner of man, so the deified Caesar is the
forerunner of the God-man.

Ill

At the period when the pagan world contemplated its spiritual
failure in the person of the supposed man-god — the Caesar im-
potently aping the deity, individual philosophers and earnest
believers were awaiting the incarnation of the Divine Word or
the coming of the Messiah, the Son of God and the King of
Truth. The man-god, even if he were lord of all the world, is
but an empty dream ; the God-man can reveal His true nature
even in the guise of a wandering rabbi.

The historical existence of Christ, as well as the reality of
His character recorded in the Gospels, is not open to serious
doubt. It was impossible to invent Him, and no one could have
done it. And this perfectly historical image is the image of the
perfect man — not of a man, however, who says, ' I have become
god,' but of one who says, c I am born of God and am sent by
Him, I was one with God before the world was made.' We are
compelled by reason to believe this testimony, for the historical
coming of Christ as God made manifest in man is inseparably
connected with the whole of the world-process. If the reality of
this event is denied, there can -be no meaning or purpose in the
universe.

When the first vegetable forms appeared in the inorganic
world, developing subsequently into the luxurious kingdom of
trees and flowers, they could not have appeared of themselves, out
of nothing. It would be equally absurd to suppose that they had
sprung from the accidental combinations of inorganic elements.
Life is a new positive content, something more than lifeless matter ;
and to reduce the greater to the lesser is to assert that something
can come out of nothing, which is obviously absurd. The
phenomena of vegetable life are continuous with the phenomena
of the inorganic world ; but that of which they are the phenomena

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 187

is essentially distinct in the two kingdoms, and the heterogeneity
becomes more and more apparent as the new kingdom develops
further. In the same way, the world of plants and the world of
animals spring, as it were, from one root ; the elementary forms
of both are so similar that biology recognises a whole class of
animal-plants (the Zoophites). But under this apparent or
phenomenal homogeneity there is undoubtedly concealed a funda
mental and essential difference of type, which evinces itself later
in the two divergent directions or planes of being — the vegetable
and the animal. In this case, again, that which is new and greater
in the animal, as compared with the vegetable type, cannot,
without obvious absurdity, be reduced to the lesser, i.e. to the
qualities they have in common. This would mean identifying
a + b with #, or recognising something as equal to nothing. In
exactly . the same way there is close proximity and intimate
material connection, in the phenomenal order, between the human
and the animal world. But the essential peculiarity of the latter —
which is certainly more apparent in a Plato or a Goethe than in a
Papuan or an Esquimo — is a new positive content, a certain plus
of existence, which cannot be deduced from the old animal type.
A cannibal may not in himself be much above the ape ; but then
he is not a final type of humanity. An uninterrupted series of
more perfect generations lead from the cannibal to Plato and
Goethe, while an ape, so long as it is an ape, does not become
essentially more perfect. We are connected with our half-savage
ancestors by the bond of historical memory, or the unity of
collective consciousness — which animals do not possess. Their
memory is individual only, and the physiological bond between
generations that finds expression in heredity does not enter their
consciousness. Therefore, though animals participate to a certain
extent in the process of making the animal form more perfect
(in accordance with the evolutionary theory), the results and the
purpose of this process remain external and foreign to them. But
the process whereby humanity is made more perfect is conditioned
by the faculties of reason and will which are found in the lowest
savage, though in a rudimentary degree only. Just as these
higher faculties cannot be deduced from the animal nature and
form a separate human kingdom, so the qualities of the spiritual
man — of man made perfect or of the God -man — cannot be

1 88 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

deduced from the states and qualities of the natural man. Conse
quently, the Kingdom of God cannot be taken to be the result of
the unbroken development of the purely-human world. The God-
man is not the same as the man-god^ even though distinct individuals
among natural humanity may have anticipated the higher life
which was to come. As the ' water lily ' appears at first sight to
be a plant, while it undoubtedly is an animal, so, at the beginning,
the bearers of the Kingdom of God apparently do not seem in
any way to differ from men of this world, though there lives and
acts within them the principle of a new order of being.

The fact that the higher forms or types of being appear, or
are revealed, after the lower does not by any means prove that
they are a product or a creation of the lower. The order of
reality is not the same as the order of appearance. The higher,
the richer, and the more positive types and states of being are
metaphysically prior to the lower, although they are revealed or
manifested subsequently to them. This is not a denial of evolu
tion ; evolution cannot be denied, it is a fact. But to maintain that
evolution creates the higher forms out of the lower, or, in the long-
run, out of nothing, is to substitute a logical absurdity for the fact.
Evolution of the lower types of being cannot of itself create the
higher. It simply produces the material conditions or brings
about the environment necessary for the manifestation or the
revelation of the higher type. Thus, every appearance of a new
type of being is in a certain sense a new creation. But it is not
created out of nothing. The material basis for the appearance of
the new is the old type. The special positive content of the
higher type does not arise de novo^ but exists from all eternity. It
simply enters, at a certain moment in the process, into a different
order of being — the phenomenal world. The conditions of the
appearance are due to the natural evolution of the material world ;
that which appears comes from God.1

IV

The interrelation between the fundamental types of being —
which are the chief stages in the world-process — is not exhausted

1 The primordial relation of God to nature lies outside the boundaries of the world-
process and is a subject for pure metaphysics, which I will not touch upon here.

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 189

by the negative fact that these types, each having its own peculiar
nature, are not reducible to one another. There is a direct con
nection between them which gives positive unity to the process as a
whole. This unity, into the essential nature of which we cannot
here inquire, is revealed in three ways. In the first place, each new
type is a new condition necessary for the realisation of the supreme
and final end, namely, for the actual manifestation in the world of the
perfect moral order, the Kingdom of God, or for ' the revelation of
the freedom and glory of the sons of God.' In order to attain its
highest end or manifest its absolute worth, a being must in the first
place be^ then it must be living^ then be conscious^ then be rational^
and finally be perfect. The defective conceptions of not being, <

lifelessness, unconsciousness, and irrationality are logically incom
patible with the idea of perfection. The concrete embodiment
of each of the positive states of existence forms the actual king
doms of the world, so that even the lower enter into the moral
order as the necessary conditions of its realisation. This instru
mental relation, however, does not exhaust the unity of the world as
given in experience. The lower types are inwardly drawn to the
higher, strive to attain to them, having in them, as it were, their
purpose and their end. This fact also indicates the purposive
character of the process as a whole (the most obvious instance of
the striving is the likeness, already indicated, of the ape to man).
Finally, the positive connection of the graduated kingdoms shows
itself in the fact that each type includes or embraces the lower
types within itself — and the higher it is, the more fully it does so.
The world-process may thus be said to be the process of gathering
the universe together, as well as of developing and perfecting it.
Plants physiologically absorb their environment (the inorganic sub
stances and physical phenomena which nourish them and promote
their growth). Animals, in addition to feeding on plants, psycho
logically absorb, i.e. take into their consciousness, a wider circle
of events correlated with them through sensation. Man, in
addition to this, grasps, by means of reason, remote spheres of
being which are not immediately sensed ; at a high stage of
development he can embrace all in one or understand the meaning
of all things. Finally the God-man or the Living Reason
(Logos) not only abstractly understands but actively realises the
meaning of everything, or the perfect moral order, as he embraces

i9o THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and connects together all things by the living personal power of
love. The highest end of man as such (pure man) and of the
human world is to gather the universe together in thought. The
end of the God-man and' of the Kingdom of God is to gather the
universe together in reality.

The vegetable world does not abolish the inorganic world, but
merely relegates it to a lower, subordinate place. The same thing
happens at the further stages of the world-process. At the end of
it, the Kingdom of God does not, when it appears, abolish the lower
types of existence, but puts them all into their right place, no longer
as separate spheres of existence but as the spiritually-physical organs
of a collected universe, bound together by an absolute inner unity
and interaction. This is the reason why the Kingdom of God is
identical with the reality of the absolute moral order, or, what is
the same thing, with universal resurrection and

When the God- man who begins the Kingdom of God is
described as can ideal,' this does not mean that he is thinkable only
and not real. He can only be called ideal in the sense in which
a man may be said to be an ideal for the animal, or a plant an
ideal for the earth out of which it grows. The plant is more ideal
in the sense of possessing greater worth, but it has a greater and
not a lesser reality or fulness of existence as compared with a clod
of earth. The same must be said of the animal as compared with
the plant, of the natural man as compared with the animal, and of
the God-man as compared with the natural man. On the whole,
the greater worth of the ideal content is in direct proportion to the
increase in real power : the plant has concrete powers (such as the
power to transmute inorganic substances for its own purposes) which
the clod of earth has not ; man is far more powerful than the ape,
and Christ has infinitely more power than the Roman Caesar.

The natural man differs from the spiritual not by being utterly
devoid of the spiritual element, but by not having the power to
realise that element completely. To obtain this power the
spiritual being of man must be fertilised by a new creative act or
by the effect of what in theology is called grace, which gives the

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 191

sons of men ' the power to become the children of God.' Even
according to orthodox theologians grace does not abolish nature
in general, and the moral nature of man in particular, but perfects it.
The moral nature of man is the necessary condition and pre
supposition of the manifestation of God in man. Not every
inorganic substance but only certain chemical combinations can be
affected by the vital force and form part of vegetable and animal
organisms. Similarly, not all living beings but only those endowed
with a moral nature can receive the effects of grace and enter into
the Kingdom of God. The beginnings of spiritual life are
inherent in the very nature of man and are to be found in the
feelings of shame, pity, and reverence, as well as in the rules
of conduct that follow from these feelings and are safeguarded
by conscience or the consciousness of duty. This natural
good in man is an imperfect good, and it is logically inevitable
that it should, as such, remain for ever imperfect. Otherwise
we should have to admit that the infinite can be the result of the
addition of finite magnitudes, that the unconditional can arise out
of the conditioned, and, finally, that something can come out of
nothing. Human nature does not contain and therefore cannot
of itself give rise to the real infinity or fulness of perfection. But
by virtue of reason or universal meaning inherent in it, it contains
the possibility of this moral infinity and a striving for its realisation,
i.e. for the apprehension of the Divine. A dumb creature striving
towards reason is a mere animal, but a being actually possessed of
reason ceases to be an animal and becomes man, forming a new
kingdom not to be deduced by a simple continuous evolution from
the lower types. Similarly, this new being, rational, though not
wholly rational, imperfect and only striving towards perfection, is
a mere man, while a being possessing perfection cannot be merely
human. He is a revelation of a new and final Kingdom of God,
in which not the relative but the absolute Good or worth is
realised, not to be deduced from the relative ; for the distinction
is one of quality and not of quantity or degree.

The divine man differs from the ordinary man not by being
a represented ideal but by being a realised ideal. The false idealism
which takes the ideal to be non-existent, and thinks its realisation
unnecessary, is not worth criticising. But there is another question
involved here which must be reckoned with. While admitting

192 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

that the divine or perfect man must have reality, and not merely
significance for thought, one may deny the historical fact of His
appearance in the past. Such denial, however, has no rational
grounds, and, moreover, it robs the process of universal history of
all meaning. If the historical person known to us from the books
of the New Testament was not the God-man or, in Kant's
terminology, the realised ' ideal,' He could only be the natural
product of historical evolution. But in that case why did not this
evolution go further in the same direction and produce other persons
still more perfect ? Why is it that after Christ there is progress
in all spheres of life except in the fundamental sphere of personal
spiritual power ? Every one who does not deliberately shut his
eyes must admit the gulf there is between the noblest type of
natural, searching wisdom immortalised by Xenophanes in his
notes and by Plato in his dialogues, and the radiant manifestation
of triumphant spirituality which is preserved in the Gospels and
had blinded Saul in order to regenerate him. And yet, less than
four centuries elapsed between Socrates and Christ. If during
this short period historical evolution could produce such an increase
of spiritual force in human personality, how is it that during a
far longer time, and in a period of rapid historical progress, evolution
has proved utterly powerless not only to bring about a corresponding
advance in personal spiritual perfection, but even to keep it on the
same level ? Spinoza and Kant, who lived sixteen and seventeen
centuries after Christ, and were very noble types of natural wisdom,
may well be compared with Socrates, but it would not occur to any
one to compare them with Christ. It is not because they had a
different sphere of activity. Take men celebrated in the religious
sphere — Mahomet, Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Ignatius Loyola,1
Fox, Swedenborg. All these were men of powerful personality j
but try honestly to compare them with Christ ! And historical
characters, such as St. Francis, who come nearest to the moral
ideal, definitely acknowledge their direct dependence upon Christ
as a higher being.

1 It will be remembered that Auguste Comte, in some letters he wrote shortly
before his death, declared Ignatius Loyola to be higher than Christ. But this judgment,
as well as other similar opinions and actions of the founder of the Positivist philosophy,
prove to all unprejudiced critics that the thinker in question, who had in his youth
suffered for two years with brain disease, was in the last years of his life once more on
the verge of insanity. See my article on Comte in the Brockfiaus-Efron Encyclopaedia.

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 193

If Christ represents only a relative stage of moral perfection,
the absence of any further stages during almost two thousand
years of the spiritual growth of humanity is utterly incompre
hensible. If He is the absolutely highest type produced by the
process of natural evolution, He ought to have appeared at the end
and not in the middle of history. But indeed He could not in any
case be a simple product of historical evolution, for the difference
between absolute and relative perfection is not one of quantity or
degree, but is qualitative and essential, and it is logically impossible
to deduce the first from the second.

The meaning of history in its concrete development compels
us to recognise in Jesus Christ not the last word of the human
kingdom, but the first and all-embracing Word of the Kingdom
of God — not the man-god, but the God-man, or the absolute
individual. From this point of view it can be well understood
why He first appeared in the middle of history and not at the end
of it. The purpose of the world-process is the revelation of the
Kingdom of God or of the perfect moral order realised by a new
humanity which spiritually grows out of the God-man. It is clear,
then, that this universal event must be preceded by the individual
appearance of the God-man Himself. As the first half of history
up to Christ was preparing the environment or the external
conditions for His individual birth, so the second half prepares the
external conditions for His universal revelation or for the coming
of the Kingdom of God. Here once more the general and logically
certain law of the universe finds application : the higher type of
being is not created by the preceding process but is phenomenally
conditioned by it. The Kingdom of God is not a product of
Christian history any more than Christ was a product of the Jewish
and the Pagan history. History merely worked out in the past and
is working out now the necessary natural and moral conditions
for the revelation of the God-man and the divine humanity.

VII

By His word and the work of His whole life, beginning with
the victory over all the temptations of the moral evil and ending

o

i94 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

with the resurrection, i.e. the victory over the physical evil or the
law of death and corruption, the true God-man has revealed to men
the Kingdom of God. But, according to the very meaning and
law of this new Kingdom, revelation cannot in this case coincide
with attainment. In making real the absolute significance of each
person the perfect moral order presupposes the moral freedom of
each. But true freedom is acquired by the finite spirit through
experience only. Free choice is only possible for the person who
knows or has experienced that which he is choosing as well as its
opposite. And although Christ finally conquered evil in the true
centre of the universe, i.e. in Himself, the victory over evil on the
circumference of the world, i.e. in the collective whole of humanity,
has to be accomplished through humanity's own experience.
This necessitates a new process of development in the Christian
world which has been baptized into Christ but has not yet put
on Christ.1

The true foundation of the perfect moral order is the uni
versality of the spirit of Christ capable of embracing and re
generating all things. The essential task of humanity, then, is
to accept Christ and regard everything in His spirit, thus enabling
His spirit to become incarnate in everything. For this incarnation
cannot be a physical event only. The individual incarnation of
the Word of God required the consent of a personal feminine will :
" Be it unto Me according to Thy word." The universal
incarnation of the Spirit of Christ or the manifestation of the
Kingdom of God requires the consent of the collective will of
humanity, that all things should be united to God. In order that
this consent should be fully conscious, Christ must be understood
not only as the absolute principle of the good, but as thefu/ness of
good. In other words, there must be established a Christian (and
an antichristian) relation to all aspects and spheres of human
life. In order that this consent should be perfectly free, that it
should be a true moral act or a fulfilment of the inner truth and
not the effect of an overwhelming superior force, it was necessary
for Christ to withdraw into the transcendental sphere of the

1 The least attention on the part of the reader will convince him that I have not
given any ground for serious critics to reproach me with the absurd identification of the
Kingdom of God with historical Christianity or the visible Church (which one ?). I
reject such identification both implicitly and explicitly ; nor do I recognise every
scoundrel who has been baptized as a spiritual' man or 'a son of God.'

THE REALITY OF THE MORAL ORDER 195

invisible reality and to withhold His active influence from human
history. It will become manifest when human society as a
whole, and not merely separate individuals, is ready for a
conscious and free choice between the absolute good and its
opposite. The unconditional moral demand, " Be ye perfect even
as your Father in heaven is perfect," is addressed to each man,
not as a separate entity but as together with others (be ye^ not
be thou}. And if this demand is understood and accepted as
an actual problem of life, it inevitably introduces us into the
realm of conditions which determine the concrete historical
existence of society or the collective man.

PART III
THE GOOD THROUGH HUMAN HISTORY

197

CHAPTER I

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
I

WE know that the good in its full sense, including the idea of
happiness or satisfaction, is ultimately defined as the true moral
order which expresses the absolutely right and the absolutely desirable
relation of each to all and of all to each. It is called the Kingdom
of God. From the moral point of view it is quite clear that the
realisation of the Kingdom of God is the only final end of life and
activity, being the supreme good, happiness, and bliss. It is
equally clear, if one thinks of the subject carefully and concretely,
that the true moral order or the Kingdom of God is both perfegfly
universal and perfectly individual. Each wants _it for himself and
for eyery one, and js _onjy _abje ^ojittain .it together j&ith,, eii&r^- one.
Therefore there can be no essential opposition between the
individual and society ; the question which of the two is an end
and which is merely a means cannot be asked. Such a question
would presuppose the real existence of the individual as a self-
sufficient and self-contained entity. In truth, however, each
individual is only the meeting-point of an infinite number of
relations with other individuals. To abstract him from these
relations means to deprive his life of all its concrete filling-in and
to transform a personality into an empty possibility of existence. To
imagine that the personal centre of our being is really cut off from A-
our environment and from the general life which connects us with ~
other minds is simply a morbid illusion of self-consciousness.

When a line is chalked before the eyes of a cock, he takes
that line to be a fatal obstacle which he cannot possibly over
step. He is evidently incapable of understanding that the fatal,

199

200 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

overwhelming significance of the chalk line is due simply to
the fact that he is exclusively occupied with this unusual and
unexpected fact, and is therefore not free with regard to it. The
delusion is quite natural for a cock, but is less natural for a
rational thinking human being. Nevertheless human beings fail
but too frequently to grasp that the given limitations of our
personality are insuperable and impermeable solely because our
attention is exclusively concentrated on them. The fatal separate-
ness of our cself ' from all else is due simply to the fact that we
imagine it to be fatal. We too are victims of auto-suggestion,
which, though it has certain objective grounds, is as fictitious and
as easily got over as the chalked line.

The self-deception in virtue of which a human individual
regards himself as real in his separateness from all things, and
presupposes this fictitious isolation to be the true ground and the
only possible starting-point for all his relations — this self-
deception of abstract subjectivism plays terrible havoc not only in
the domain of metaphysics — which, indeed, it abolishes altogether
— but also in the domain of the moral and political life. It is the
source of many involved theories, irreconcilable contradictions, and
insoluble questions. But all of them would disappear of them
selves if, without being afraid of authoritative names, we would
grasp the simple fact that the theories and the insoluble problems
in question could only have arisen from the point of view of the
hypnotised cock.

II

* Human personality, and therefore every individual human
^^*»** 'being, is capable of realising infinite fulness of being, or, in other

words, it is a particular form with infinite content. The reason of $iJL
man contains an infinite possibility of a truer and truer know- ^M
ledge of the meaning of all things. The will of man contains an
equally infinite possibility of a more and more perfect realisation
of this universal meaning in the particular life and environment.
Human personality is infinite : this is an axiom of moral philo
sophy. But the moment that abstract subjectivism draws its chalk
line before the eyes of the unwary thinker the most fruitful of
axioms becomes a hopeless absurdity. Human personality as

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 201

containing infinite possibilities is abstracted from all the concrete
conditions and results of its realisation in and through society —
and is indeed opposed to them. There ensues insoluble con
tradiction between the individual and society, and the c fatal
question ' arises as to which of the two must be sacrificed to the
other. Persons hypnotised by the individualistic view affirm the
independence of separate personality which determines all its
relations from within, and regard social ties and collective order as
merely an external limit and an arbitrary restriction which must
at any cost be removed. On the other hand, thinkers who are
under the spell of collectivism take the life of humanity to be simply
an interplay of human masses, and regard the individual as an
insignificant and transient element of society, who has no rights
of his own, and may be left out of account for the sake of the so-
called common good. But what are we to make of society
consisting of moral zeros, of rightless and non-individual creatures ?
Would it be human society ? Where would its dignity and
the inner value of its existence spring from, and wherein would it
lie ? And how could such a society hold together ? It is clear
that this is nothing but a sad and empty dream, which neither
could nor ought to be realised. The opposite ideal of self-
sufficient personality is equally chimeric. Deprive a concrete
human personality of all that is in any way due to its relations
with social and collective wholes, and the only thing left will be
an animal entity containing only a pure possibility or an empty
form of man — that is, something that does not really exist at all.
Those who had occasion to go down to hell or to rise up to
heaven, as, for instance, Dante and Swedenborg, did not find
even there any isolated individuals, but saw only social groups and
circles.

Social life is not a condition superadded to the individual life,
but is contained in the very definition of personality which is
essentially a rationally-knowing and a morally-active force — both
knowing and acting being only possible in the life of a com
munity. Rational knowledge on its formal side is conditioned by
general notions which express a unity of meaning in an endless
multiplicity of events ; real and objective universality (the general
meaning) of notions manifests itself in language as a means of
communication, without which rational activity cannot develop,

202 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and, for lack of realisation, gradually disappears altogether or
becomes merely potential. Language — this concrete reason —
could not have been the work of an isolated individual, and con
sequently such an individual could not be rational, could not be
human. On its material side knowledge of truth is based upon
experience — hereditary, collective experience which is being
gradually stored up. The experience of an absolutely isolated
being, even if such a being could exist, would obviously be quite
insufficient for the knowledge of truth. As to the moral
determination of personality, it is clear that, although the idea of
the good or of moral value is not wholly due to social relations as
is often maintained, concrete development of human morality
or the realisation of the idea of the good is only possible for the
individual in a social environment and through interaction with it.
In this all-important respect society is nothing but the objective
realisation of what is contained in the individual.

Instead of an insoluble contradiction between two mutually ex
clusive principles — between two abstract isms, — we really find two
correlative terms each of which logically and historically requires
and presupposes the other. In its essential signification society is
not the external limit of the individual but his inner fulfilment. It
is not an arithmetical sum or a mechanical aggregate of the indi
viduals that compose it, but the indivisible whole of the communal
life. This life has been partly realised in the past and is preserved
in the abiding social tradition^ is being partly realised in the
present by means of social service^ and finally, it anticipates in
the form of a social ideal^ present in the best minds, its perfect
realisation in the future.

Corresponding to these three fundamental and abiding
moments of the individually-social life — the religious, the political,
and the prophetic — there are three main concrete stages through
which human life and consciousness pass in the course of the
historical development, namely, (i) the stage of organisation based
upon kinship, which belongs to the past though it is still preserved
in a changed form in the family ; (2) the national state^ prevalent
at the present time ; and finally (3) the universal communion of
life, as the ideal of the future.

At all these stages society is essentially the moral fulfilment or
the realisation of the individual in a given environment. But the

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 203

environment is not always the same. At the first stage it is
limited for each to his own tribe ; at the second, to his own father
land ; and it is only at the third that the human personality, having
attained a clear consciousness of its inner infinity, endeavours to
realise it in a perfect society, abolishing all limitations both in the
nature and in the extent of concrete interaction.

Ill

Each single individual possesses as such the potentiality of
perfection or of positive infinity, namely, the capacity to under
stand all things with his intellect and to embrace all things with
his heart, or to enter into a living communion with everything.
This double infinity — the power of conception and the power of
striving and activity, called in the Bible, according to the inter
pretation of the Fathers of the Church, the image and likeness of
God — necessarily belongs to every person. It is in this that the
absolute significance, dignity, and worth of human personality
consists, and this is the basis of its inalienable rights.1 It is clear
that the realisation of this infinity, or the actuality of the
perfection, demands that all should participate in it. It cannot
be the private possession of each taken separately^ but becomes his
through his relation to all. In other words, by remaining isolated
and limited an individual deprives himself of the real fulness of
life, Le. deprives himself of perfection and of infinity. A con
sistent affirmation of his own separateness or isolation would
indeed be physically impossible for the individual person. All
that the life of the community contains is bound in one way or
another to affect individual persons ; it becomes a part of them
and in and through them alone attains its final actuality or
completion. Or if we look at the same thing from another point
of view — all the real content of the personal life is obtained from
the social environment and, in one way or another, is conditioned
by its state at the given time. In this sense it may be said that

1 This meaning of the image and likeness of God is essentially the same as that
indicated in Part II. It is clear, indeed, that an infinite power of conception and
understanding can only give us the image (' the schema ') of perfection, while an infinite
striving, having for its purpose the actual realisation of 'perfection, is the beginning of
our likeness to God, who is the real and not only the ideal perfection.

204 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

society is the completed or magnified individual^ and the individual
is compressed or concentrated society.

The world purpose is not to create a solidarity between each
and all, for it already exists in the nature of things, but to make
each and all aware of this solidarity and spiritually alive to it ; to
transform it from a merely metaphysical and physical solidarity
into a morally-metaphysical and a morally-physical one. The
life of man already is, both at its lower and its upper limit, an in
voluntary participation in the developing life of humanity and of
the whole world. But the dignity of human life and the meaning
of the universe as a whole demand that this involuntary partici
pation of each in everything should become voluntary and be
more and more conscious and free, i.e. really personal — that each
should more and more understand and fulfil the common work as
if it were his own. It is clear that in this way alone can the
infinite significance of personality be realised or, in other words,
pass from possibility to actuality.

But this transition itself — this spiritualisation or moralisation
of the natural fact of solidarity — is also an inseparable part of the
common work. The fulfilment of this supreme task depends not
upon personal efforts alone, but is also necessarily conditioned by
the general course of the world's history, or by the actual state of
the social environment at a given moment in history. Thus the
individual improvement in each man cannot be severed from the
universal, nor the personal morality from the social.

IV

True morality is the rightful interaction between the indi
vidual and his environment — taking the term environment in the
wide sense to embrace all spheres of reality — the higher as well as
the lower — with which man stands in the practical relation. The
true personal dignity of each undoubtedly finds expression and
embodiment in his relations to his surroundings. The infinite
possibilities inherent in the very nature of man gradually become
realised in this individually-social reality. Historical experience
finds man as already having his completion in a certain social
milieu, and the subsequent course of history is nothing but a

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 205

refinement and enlargement of this double-sided individually-social
life. The three main stages or strata in this process that have
been indicated above — the patriarchal, the national, and the
universal — are of course connected by a number of intermediate
links. A higher form does not replace or entirely cancel the
lower, but, absorbing it into itself, makes it a subordinate part
instead of an independent whole. Thus with the appearance of
the state the tribal union becomes a subordinate part of it in the
form of the family. But the relation of kinship, so far from being
abolished, acquires a greater moral depth. It merely changes its
sociological and judicial significance, ceasing to be a seat of
independent authority or of jurisdiction of its own.

As the lower forms of the collective life pass into the higher,
the individual, in virtue of the infinite potentiality of understanding
and of striving for the better latent in him, appears as the principle
of progress and of movement (the dynamic element in history),
while the social environment, being a reality already achieved,
a completed objectification of the moral content in a certain
sphere and at a certain stage, naturally represents the stable,
conservative principle (the static element of history). When in
dividuals who are more gifted or more developed than others
begin to be conscious that their social environment is no longer a
realisation or a completion of their life, but is simply an external
barrier and obstacle to their positive moral aspirations, they
become the bearers of a higher social consciousness which seeks
embodiment in new forms and in a new order of life that would
correspond to it.

All social environment is the objective expression or embodi
ment of morality (of right relations) at a certain stage of human
development. But the moral agent, in virtue of his striving
towards the absolute good, outgrows a given limited form of
morality embodied in the social structure and takes up a negative
attitude towards it — not towards it as such, but towards the given
lower stage of its embodiment. It is obvious that such a conflict
is not an opposition of principle between the individual and the
social element, but is simply an opposition between the earlier and
the later stages of the individually-social development.

206 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

V

The moral worth and dignity of man finds its first expression
in social life as determined by kinship}- We find in it a rudimentary
embodiment or organisation of morality as a whole — religious,
altruistic, and ascetic. In other words, a group held together by
the tie of kinship is the realisation of personal human dignity in
the narrowest and most fundamental sphere of society. The first
condition of the true dignity of man — reverence for that which
is higher than himself, for the super-material powers that rule
his life — here finds expression in the worship of the ancestors or
of the founders of the clan. The second condition of personal
dignity — the recognition of the dignity of others — is found in the
solidarity of the members of the group, their mutual affection and
consideration. The third, or, from another point of view, the
first condition of human dignity — freedom from the predominance
of carnal desires — is here to some extent attained by means of
certain compulsory limitation or regulation of the sexual relations
through the different forms of marriage and also by means of
other restraining rules of the communal life, all of which de
mand the shame to which the ancient chronicler refers.

Thus in this primitive circle of human life the moral dignity
of the person is in all respects realised by the community and in
the community. How can there be any contradiction and con
flict here between the individual and the collective principle and
what expression can it assume ? The relation between the two
is direct and positive. The social law is not extraneous to the
individual, it is not imposed upon him from without contrary to
his nature ; it merely gives a definite, objective, and constant form
to the inward motives of personal morality. Thus the person's
inner religious feeling (rudiments of which are already found in
certain animals) impels him to hold in reverence the secret causes
and conditions of his existence — and the cult of ancestor worship
merely gives an objective expression to this desire. The feeling
of pity, equally inherent in man, inclines him to treat his relatives
with fairness — the social law merely confirms this personal

1 I am speaking of kinship in the wide sense and have in mind a group of persons
forming one self-contained community, united by the blood-tie and intermarriage,
whether the connection between them takes the form of mother-right or of father-right.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 207

altruism by giving it a fixed and definite form and making it
capable of realisation ; thus the defence of the weak members of
the social group from injury is impossible for a single individual
to undertake, but is organised by the clan as a whole or by a
union of clans. Finally, man's inherent modesty finds realisation
in definite social rules of abstinence. Personal morality cannot
be separated from the social, for the first is the inner beginning of
the second, and the second the objective realisation of the first.
The rules of social life at the patriarchal stage — worship of common
ancestors, mutual help between the individual members of the
clan, limitation of sensuality by marriage — have a moral source
and character, and it is clear that to carry out these social rules is
a gain and not a loss to the individual. The more an individual
member of a clan enters into the spirit of its social structure,
which demands reverence for the unseen, solidarity with his
neighbours, and control of carnal passions, obviously the more
moral he becomes ; and the more moral he is, the higher is his
inner worth or personal dignity ; thus subordination to society up
lifts the individual. On the other hand, the more free this sub
ordination, the more independently does the individual follow the
inner promptings of his own moral nature which accord with the
demands of social morality, the greater support does the society
find in such a person ; therefore the independence of the individual
lends strength to the social order. In other words, the relation
between the true significance of the individual and the true force
of society is a direct and not an inverse one.

What concrete form, then, could the principle of the opposition
of the individual to society and of his superiority to it take at
this early stage ? Perhaps the supposed champion of the rights
of the individual would desecrate the tombs of his ancestors,
insult his father, outrage his mother, kill his brothers, and marry
his own sisters ? It is clear that such actions are below the very
lowest social level, and it is equally clear that true realisation of
absolute human dignity cannot be based upon a simple rejection
of a given social structure.

VI

The moral content of social life as determined by kinship is
permanent ; its external and limited form is inevitably outgrown

208 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

by the historical process, with the active help of individuals.
The first expansion of the primitive life is, of course, due to the
natural increase of population. Within the limits of one and
the same family the more intimate degrees of kinship are followed
by the more remote, although the moral duties extend to the
latter also. Similarly to the progressive division of a living
organic cell, the social cell — the group united by kinship — divides
into many groups, which preserve, however, their connection
and the memory of their common descent. Thus a new social
unit is formed — the tribe — which embraces several contiguous
clans. For instance, the North American Red Indian tribe
Seneca, described by the well-known sociologist Morgan,
consisted of eight independent clans, evidently formed by the
subdivision of one original clan, and standing in definite relation
to one another. Each clan was based on kinship, and marriages
within the clan were strictly forbidden as incestuous. Each clan
was autonomous, though in certain respects subordinate to the
common authority of the whole tribe, namely, to the tribal
council, which consisted of the representatives of all the eight
clans. In addition to this political and military institution, the
unity of the tribe found expression in a common language and
common religious celebrations. The transition stage between
the clan and the tribe were the groups which Morgan designates
by the classical name offratrias. Thus the tribe of Seneca was
divided into twofratrias, each consisting of an equal number of
clans. The first contained the clans of Wolf, Bear, Tortoise,
Beaver ; the second, Deer, Wood-cock, Heron, Falcon. The
clans in each group were regarded as brother clans, and in relation
to the clans of the other group as cousins. It is clear that the
original clan from which the Seneca tribe was descended was first
divided into two new clans, each of which became subdivided
into four, and this succession has been preserved in the common
memory.

There is no reason why the consciousness of social solidarity,
extended to a group of clans, should stop at the limits of the
tribe. The widening of the moral outlook on the one hand,
and the recognised advantages of common action on the other,
induce many tribes to form first temporary and, later, permanent
alliances with one another. Thus the tribe of Seneca, together

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 209

with many others, entered into the union of tribes bearing the
common name of Iroquois. The tribes forming such unions
are generally, though not necessarily, supposed to have a common
ancestor. It often happens that when several tribes whose
ancestors had parted in times immemorial, and which had grown
and developed independently of one another, come together again
under new conditions, they form a union by means of treaties for
the sake of mutual defence and common enterprise. The treaty
in this case is certainly regarded as of far greater significance
than the blood-tie, which need not be presupposed at all.

The union of tribes, especially of those that have reached
a certain degree of culture and occupy a definite territory, is the
transition to a state, the embryo of a nation. The Iroquois,
like most Red Indian tribes who remained in the wild forests
and prairies of North America, did not advance further than
such an embryo of a nation and state. But other representatives
of the same race, moving southwards, fairly rapidly passed from
the military union of tribes to a permanent political organisation.
The Aztecs of Mexico, the Incas of Peru founded real national
states of the same type as the great theocratical monarchies of
the Old World. The essential inner connection between the
original social cell — the group united by kinship — and the wide
political organisation is clearly expressed in the word fatherland^
which almost in all languages designates the national state.
The term fatherland, implying as it does a relation of kinship
(patria^ Voter land) etc.), indicates not that the state is an expansion
of the family — which is not true — but that the moral principle of
this new great union must be essentially the same as the principle
of the narrower union based upon kinship. In truth, states have
arisen out of wars and treaties, but this does not alter the fact
that the purpose or meaning for which they came into being
was to establish in the wide circle of the national, and even the
international, relations the same solidarity and peaceable life as had
existed of old within the limits of the family.

The process of the formation of states and the external
changes in the human life connected with it do not concern us
here. What is of interest to ethics is the moral position of the
individual with regard to his new social environment. So long
as the only higher forms of social life, in contradistinction to

P

210 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the clan, were found in the tribe and the union of tribes, the
position of the individual was not essentially altered. It only
changed, so to speak, quantitatively : moral consciousness
received greater satisfaction and was more completely realised
as the sphere of practical interaction became wider ; and that was
all. The divine ancestor of a given clan found brothers in the
ancestors of other clans, each other's deities were mutually
recognised, the religions of separate peoples were amalgamated
and to a certain extent received a universal meaning (at the
periods of tribal festivities), but the character of worship remained
the same. The expression of human solidarity — the defence of
one's kinsmen and the duty of avenging their wrongs — also
remained intact when the tribe and the union of tribes came
to be formed. Essential change took place only with the
appearance of the fatherland and the state. The national
religion may have developed out of ancestor worship, but the
people have themselves forgotten its origin ; similarly, the
dispassionate justice of the state is essentially different from
blood-vengeance. Here we have not simply an expansion of
the old order based upon kinship, but the appearance of a new
one. And in connection with this new order of the national state
there may have arisen, and there did arise, a conflict of principle
between the constituent forces of society — a conflict which
might, to a superficial observer, appear as the conflict between
the individual and the society as such.

VII

Neither the tribe, nor the union of tribes, nor the national
state — the fatherland — destroys the original social cell ; it only
alters its signification. The change may be expressed in the
following short but perfectly correct formula : the state order trans
forms the clan into the family. Indeed, until the state is formed,
family life, strictly speaking, does not exist. The group of
individuals held together by a more or less intimate blood-tie,
which in primitive times forms the social unit, differs from the real
family in one essential respect. The distinguishing characteristic
of the family is that it is a form of private, in contradistinction to
public, life: ca public family* is a contradiction in terms. But

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 211

the difference between public and private could only have arisen
with the formation and thedevelopment of the state which essentially
stands for the public aspect of common life. Until then, so long
as the legal and political functions of the social life were still
undifferentiated — when judgment and execution, war and peace
were still the private concerns of the primitive groups connected by
the blood-tie — such groups, even the smallest of them, obviously
could not possess the distinguishing characteristic of the family
or home. They acquired this new character only when the
functions in question were taken over by the state as a public
or national organisation.

Now this transformation of the clan, i.e. of the political
and social union, into the family, i.e. into an exclusively social,
private, or home union, could be looked upon in two ways. It
might be regarded as involving the purification of the tie of
kinship which thus acquires greater inward dignity, or as
involving its external lessening and degradation.1 Since the
duties of the individual to his clan were for a long time the
sole expression of individual morality, conservative and passive
natures might regard the submission of the clan to a new and
higher unity of the state or fatherland as immoral. The personal
consciousness was for the first time confronted with the question
as to which of the two social unions it was to side with — with
the more narrow and intimate, or with the wider and more remote.
But whichever way this question might be settled by this or that
individual, it is in any case clear that this is not a question of con
flict between the individual and society, nor even between two
kinds of social relation — the relation of kinship and of nationality.
It is simply a question whether human life should stop at the stage
of kinship or be further developed by means of the organisation
of the state.

In the social group determined by kinship with its moral
conditions and institutions, the human individual can realise his
inner dignity better than in the state of brutal isolation. History

1 This double point of view may be brought out by an analogous example from quite
a different sphere of relations. The loss by the Pope of his political power, or
the abolition of the Church-state, may be regarded even by good and genuine Roman
Catholics in two different and, indeed, opposite ways. It may be taken to be either a
favourable condition for the increase of the inward moral authority of the Pope, or a
lamentable detraction and decrease in the scope of his political activity.

212 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

•

has proved that the further development or improvement of the
individual demands the more complex conditions of life which are
to be found in civilised states only. The immature fancy of the
young poet may glorify the half-savage life of nomadic gypsies ;
the unanswerable criticism of his view is contained in the simple
fact that Pushkin, a member of a civilised community, could create
his Gypsies^ while the gypsies, in spite of all their alleged ad
vantages, could not create a Pushkin.1

All the things whereby our spiritual nature is nurtured, all
that lends beauty and dignity to our life in the sphere of religion,
science and art, has sprung from the foundation of ordinary
civilised life, conditioned by the order of the state. It has all been
created not by the clan but by the fatherland. When the clan life
still predominated, the men who took their stand with the
fatherland, which till then was non-existent or only just dawning
on their own inner vision, were bearers of a higher consciousness,
of a better individually-social morality. They were benefactors
of humanity and saints of history, and it is not for nothing that
the grateful city-states of Greece and other countries did homage
to them as their heroes — the eponyms.

Social progress is not an impersonal work. The conflict of
individual initiative with its immediate social environment led to
the foundation of a wider and more important social whole — the
fatherland. The bearers of the super-tribal consciousness, or, more
exactly, of the half-conscious striving towards a wider moral and
social life, felt cramped in the narrow sphere of the clan life, broke
away from it, gathered a band of free followers round themselves,
and founded states and cities. The pseudo- scientific criticism
has arbitrarily converted into a myth the fugitive Dido who founded
Carthage, and the outlaw brothers, founders of Rome. In quite
historical times, however, we find a sufficient number of instances
to inspire us with legitimate confidence in those legends of
antiquity. Personal exploit breaking down the given social limits
for the sake of creating new and higher forms of political and
social life, is a fact so fundamental that it is bound to be met with
at all periods of human development.2

1 The same poet, however, ' with reverence' dedicates one of his more mature works
to the historian of the Russian Empire.

2 The absurdity of the point of view generally assumed by the negative historical

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 213

The historical as well as the naturally-scientific experience
shows that it is impossible for a given organised group to break up
or undergo any substantial transformation (for instance, to enter
into another and a greater whole) apart from the activity of the finite
units which compose it. The ultimate unit of human society is
the individual who has always been the active principle of historical
progress, i.e. of the transition from the narrow and limited forms
of life to social organisations that are wider and richer in content.

VIII

A given narrow social group (say, a clan) has a claim upon the
individual, for it is only in and through it that he can begin to
realise his own inner dignity. But the rights of the community
over the individual cannot be absolute, for a given group in its
isolation is only one relative stage of the historical development,
while human personality may pass through all the stages in its
striving for infinite perfection, which is obviously not exhausted
or finally satisfied by any limited social organisation. In other
words, in virtue of his inner infinity the individual can be absolutely
and entirely at one with the social environment not in its given limita
tions^ but only in its infinite completeness, which becomes gradually
manifest as the forms of social life, in their interaction with individual
persons , become wider, higher •, and more perfect. It is only in a com
munity that personal achievement is fruitful, but in a community
which develops. Unconditional surrender to any limited and
immovable form of social life, so far from being the duty of the
individual, is positively wrong, for it could only be to the
detriment of his human dignity.

An enterprising member of the clan is, then, morally right in
rebelling against the conservatism of the clan, and in helping to create

criticism escapes general ridicule simply owing to the 'darkness of time," which conceals
the objects upon which it is exercised. If its favourite methods and considerations were
applied, e.g., to Mahomet or Peter the Great, there would be as little left of these
historical heroes as of Dido or Romulus. Every one who has read Whateley's admirable
pamphlet on Napoleon will agree that the solar significance of this mythological hero is
proved in it, in accordance with the strict rules of the critical school, and is worked out
with a consistency, clearness, and completeness not often to be found in the more or less
famous works of the negative critics, although the latter wrote without the least irony
but with the most serious intentions.

214 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the state which transforms the once independent social groups
into elementary cells of a new and greater whole. But this implies
that the new social organisation has no absolute rights over the
old, tribal, or, henceforth, family relations. The order of the
state is a relatively higher but by no means a perfect form of
social life, and it therefore has only a relative advantage over the
organisation based upon kinship. And although the latter is merely
a transitory stage in the social development, it contains a moral
element of absolute value, which retains its force in the state and
must be sacred to it. Indeed, two aspects are clearly apparent
in primitive morality. In the first place, certain moral con
ceptions are connected with the idea of the clan as an independent
or autonomous form of common life — which, in fact, it had been
once, but ceased to be when the state was formed. This is
the transitory and supersedable element of the clan morality. In
the second place, certain natural duties arise from the intimate tie
of kinship and common life, and these obviously retain all their
significance in the transition to the state, or in the transformation
of the clan into the family. The hard shell of the clan organisa
tion has burst and fallen apart, but the moral kernel of the family has
remained, and will remain to the end of history. Now when the
transition from one organisation to another has just been effected,
the representatives of the newly-formed state-power, conscious of
its advantages over the clan structure, might easily ascribe to the
new order an absolute significance which does not belong to it,
and place the law of the state above the law of nature. In con
flicts which arise on this ground, moral right is no longer on the
side of these representatives of the relatively higher social order, but
on the side of the champions of what is absolute in the old, and of
what must remain equally sacred under any social order. Con
servatism now ceases to be a blind or selfish inertness, and becomes
a pure consciousness of supreme duty. Woman, the incarnation
of the conservative principle, the bulwark of low routine, now
becomes the embodiment of moral heroism. Sophocles's Antigone
impersonates the element of absolute value contained in the old
order of life — the element which retains its permanent significance
as the clan becomes the family within the new organisation of the
state. She has no thought of the political autonomy of the clan,
of the right of blood-vengeance, etc. ; she simply stands up for

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 215

her unconditional right to fulfil her unconditional duty of piety
and sisterly love — to give honourable burial to her nearest kinsman
who can receive it from no one but her. She has no enmity
towards the moral foundations of the state ; she simply feels —
and quite rightly — that apart from these foundations the demands
of the positive law are not absolute but are limited by the natural
law which is sanctified by religion and safeguards family duties
against the state itself if need be, when it appropriates what does
not belong to it. The conflict between Creon and Antigone
is not a conflict between two moral forces — the social and the
individual ; it is a conflict of the moral and the anti-moral force.
It is impossible to agree with the usual view of Antigone as of
the bearer and champion of personal feeling against a universal
law, embodied in the representative of the state — Creon. The
true meaning of the tragedy is entirely different. A religious
attitude to the dead is a moral duty, the fulfilment of which lies
at the basis of all social life j personal feeling expresses merely the
subjective aspect of the matter. In our own day, the burial of
dead relatives and the homage paid to them is not due to personal
feeling only ; and this was still more the case in ancient times.
The feeling may not be there, but the duty remains. Antigone
had heartfelt affection for both her brothers, but sacred duty
bound her to the one who needed her religious help. Being the
pattern of a moral individual, Antigone at the same time is the
representative of true social order, which is only preserved by the
fulfilment of duty. She does not in the least conceal her feelings,
and yet as the motive of her action she gives not her feelings
but a sacred obligation which has to be fulfilled to the end
(0i'A?7 per avrov KCICTO/ZCU, (£i'Aov /zrra, — ocrta Travovpy^cracra). This
obligation is not of course an abstract duty, but an expression of
the eternal order of reality :

" I owe a longer allegiance to the dead than to the living, in
that world / shall abide for ever. But if thou wilt be guilty of
dishonouring laws which the gods have stablished in honour "...

To Creon's question, "And thou didst dare to transgress
the law ? " she answers not by referring to her personal feeling
but to the absolute supremacy of the eternal moral order which
cannot be cancelled by civil laws :

" For it was not Zeus that had published me that edict :

216 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

net such are the laws set among men by the Justice who dwells
with the gods below ; nor deemed I that thy decrees were of
such force, that a mortal could override the unwritten and un
failing statutes of heaven."

As for Creon, he certainly does not represent the principle of
the state, the moral basis of which is the same as that of the
family, though with the advantage of a fuller realisation. He is
the representative of the state that has become perverted or has
put itself into a false position — of the state that has forgotten its
place. But since such perversion does not form part of the essence
or the purpose of the state, it can only arise from the evil passions
of its representatives — in this case, of Creon. It would then be
right to say, in direct opposition to the popular view, that
Antigone stands for the universal and Creon for the individual
element. Both statements, however, would be incorrect and
inexact. It is clear that the opposition between the individual
and society, the particular and the general, does not as such ever
correspond to reality. The true opposition and conflict is not
sociological but purely moral ; it is the conflict between good and
evil, each of which finds expression both in the individual and
in the social life. Cain killed Abel not because he represented
the principle of individuality as against the family union — for in
that case all developed ' personalities ' would have to kill their
brothers ; he killed him because he stood for the principle of
evil, which may manifest itself both individually and collectively
privately or publicly. Creon in his turn forbade the citizens to
fulfil certain religiously-moral duties, not because he was the
head of the state, but because he was wicked and followed the
same principle which was active in Cain previously to any state.
Every law is of course a state enactment, but Creon's position is
determined not by the fact that he enacted a law, but that he
enacted an impious law. This is not the fault of the state-power
but of Creon's own moral worthlessness ; for it could hardly be
maintained that the function of the state consists precisely in
enacting impious and inhuman laws.

Creon then does not stand for the principle of the state but for
the principle of evil which is rooted in the personal will, though
it also finds expression and embodiment in the life of the com
munity — in the present case in the form of a bad law of the stxte.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 217

On the other hand, Antigone, who lays down her life for the fulfil
ment of a religious and moral duty that lies at the basis of social
life, is simply the representative of the principle of good, which is
also rooted in the personal will, but is realised in the true communal
life.

All human conflict is in the last resort reducible not to the
relative sociological oppositions but to the absolute opposition of
the good and the self-asserting evil. The inmost essence of the
question is always one and the same ; but it does not follow that
the various historical situations in which it is revealed again and
again are therefore devoid of interest and importance of their own
even from the ethical point of view. The inner essence of good
and evil can only be clearly known through their typical mani
festations. Thus, the evil which expresses itself as the perversion
of the idea of the state, or as putting the law of the state above
the law of morality, is quite a specific form of evil. It is a higher
grade of evil than, for instance, a simple murder or even fratricide ;
but precisely because it is more complex and subtle, it is more
excusable from the subjective point of view and is less blame
worthy than the cruder crimes. Therefore Creon, for instance,
though socially he is more pernicious, is personally less guilty
than Cain.

There is another important shade of meaning in this profound
tragedy. Speaking generally, the state is a higher stage of
historical development than the clan. This higher stage had just
been attained in Greece. The memory of how it came to be
established, of the struggle and the triumph, is still fresh in the
minds of its representatives. This recent victory of the new over
the old, of the higher over the lower, is not merely accidental. In
view of the obvious advantages of the state union over the feuds
of the clans, its triumph is recognised as something necessary,
rightful, and progressive. Hence Creon's self-confidence at the
beginning of the play. The bad law proclaimed by him, putting
as it does the loyalty to the new state above the original religious
duties, is not merely an abuse of the power of the state, but an
abuse of victory — not of the local victory of the Thebans over the
Argives, but of the general victory of the state order — of the
city state — over the clan. Creon cannot therefore be looked upon
simply as a tyrant, or a representative of personal arbitrariness and

218 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

material power — and this is not the way in which the ancients
regarded him.1 The law he enacted was supposed to be the
expression of the common will of the citizens. The short preface
by Aristophanes the grammarian, usually placed at the beginning
of the tragedy, begins thus : " Antigone who buried Polinices
against the order of the city (or the state) — napa TT)V irpoa-ragiv TTJS
TroAecos." In the play itself, Ismene justifies her refusal to help
Antigone by saying that she cannot do violence to the will of her
fellow-citizens. Creon, too, bases his argument not upon the
principle of autocracy but upon the unconditional significance of
patriotism :

" If any makes a friend of more account than his fatherland,
that man has no place in my regard."

The ethico-psychological basis of the bad law lies of course in
Creon's bad will. This will, however, is not merely senseless and
arbitrary but is connected with a general although a false idea
according to which the power of the state and the laws of the
state are higher than the moral law. Creon formulates this false
idea with perfect clearness :

" Whomsoever the city may appoint, that man must be
obeyed, in little things and great, in just things and unjust"

This idea, outrageously false as it is, has been and still is the
inspiration of men who have not even Creon's excuse, namely,
intoxication with the recent victory of the state order over the
tribal anarchy. In those half-historical times no clear protest —
such as Sophocles puts into the mouth of his Antigone — may
have been raised by the better; consciousness against this idea,
but, at the epoch of Sophocles himself, the best minds were
well aware that historical progress in bringing about new
forms of society cannot possibly supersede the essential foundations
of all social life. They understood that although such progress is
both important and necessary, it is relative and subordinate to a
higher purpose, and that it loses all justification when it is turned
against the unconditional moral good, the realisation of which is the
sole object of the historical development. And however highly we

1 It will be remembered that the Greek word rvpavvos did not originally have a bad
meaning, but designated every monarch. In the same trilogy of Sophocles, the first
play is called Qldiirovs rtipavvos, which is rightly translated Oedipus rex ; and the word
ought to be translated in the same way in the Antigone in reference to Creon.

THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY 219

might value those who further the triumphant march of progress,
the highest dignity of man, worthy of whole-hearted sympathy and
approval, consists not in winning temporal victories, but in observ
ing eternal limits equally sacred both for the past and for the
future.

CHAPTER II

THE CHIEF MOMENTS IN THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF
THE INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

I

WITH the establishment of the national state the moral outlook
of the individual is no doubt considerably widened and a greater
field is opened for the exercise of his good feelings and of his active
will in moral conduct. The conception of the deity becomes
higher and more general, a certain religious development takes
place. Altruism, or moral solidarity with other human beings,
increases quantitatively or in extension and becomes qualitatively
higher, losing its dominant character of natural instinct and being
directed upon invisible and ideal objects — the state, the fatherland.
These ideal objects are sensuously realised in the unity of language,
customs, in the actual representatives of authority, etc., but, as is
clear to every one, they are not exhausted by these concrete facts.
The nation does not disappear with the change of its customs, the
state does not cease to exist when its particular rulers pass away.
The spiritual nature and the ideal significance of objects such as
the nation and the state are preserved in any case, and the in
dividual's moral relation to them, expressing itself as true patriotism
or civic virtue, is in this sense, other conditions being equal, a higher
stage of morality than the simple feeling of kinship or of the blood-
tie. On the other hand, however, it is often pointed out that as
the range of moral relations or the social environment becomes
wider, the inner personal basis of morality loses its living force
and reality. It is urged that the intensity of moral motives is in
inverse ratio to their objective extension ; that it is impossible to
love one's country as sincerely and immediately as one's friends or

220

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 221

relatives, and that the living interest in one's private welfare can
never be compared with the abstract interest in the welfare of the
state, not to speak of the general welfare of humanity. The interest
in the latter is indeed often denied as fictitious.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of humanity, it
must be admitted that the argument concerning the inverse
relation between the intensity and the extension of moral feelings
has a foundation in fact. But to be correctly understood it
requires the following three reservations :

(1) Independently of the relation of individual persons, taken
separately, to the more or less wide social whole, there exists
collective morality, which embraces these persons in their totality
— as a crowd or as a people. There is such a thing as the
criminal crowd, upon which the criminologists have now turned
their attention ; still more prominent is the senseless crowd, the
human herd ; but there is also the splendid, the heroic crowd.
The crowd excited by brutal or bestial instincts lowers the
spiritual level of individuals that are drawn into it. But the
human mass animated by collectively-moral motives lifts up to
its level individuals in whom these motives are, as such, devoid of
genuine force. At the kinship-group stage, the striving of the best
men for a wider collective morality conditioned the appearance of
the state or the nation, but once this new social whole, real and
powerful in spite of its ideal nature, has been created, it begins
to exert direct influence not only upon the best^ but also upon the
average and even the bad men that form part of it.

(2) Apart from collective morality, the quantitative fact that
most men taken separately are bad patriots and poor citizens,
is qualitatively counterbalanced by the few high instances of true
patriotism and civic virtue which could not have arisen in the
primitive conditions of life, and only became possible when the
state, the nation, the fatherland had come into being.

(3) Finally, whether the moral gain obtained by the widening
of the social environment in the national state be great or small,
it is in any case a gain. The good contained in the tribal
morality is not annulled by this extension but is merely modified
and made more pure as it assumes the form of family ties and
virtues, which are supplemented and not replaced by patriot
ism. Thus, even from the individual point of view, our love

222 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

for millions of our fellow-citizens, even though it cannot be as
great as our love for some dozens of our friends, is a direct gain,
for the wider love that is less intense does not destroy the more
intense one. Consequently, from whatever point of view we look
at it, the extension of the sphere of life from the limits of the
clan to the state unquestionably means moral progress. This
progress is apparent both in man's relation to the gods and to his
neighbours, and also, as will be presently shown, in man's relation
to his lower material nature.

II

The moral principle which demands from man subordination
to the higher and solidarity with his neighbours, requires him to
dominate physical nature as the basis upon which reason works.
This domination has for its immediate object the body of the
individual himself — hence the ascetic morality in the narrow sense
of the term. But the material life of the single individual is only
a portion of the general material life that surrounds him, and to
separate this portion from the whole is neither logically legitimate
nor practically possible. So long as the outer nature completely
overwhelms man, who, helpless and lost in virginal forests among
wild beasts, is compelled to think of nothing but the preservation
and maintenance of his existence, the thought of the mastery of
the spirit over the flesh can hardly even arise, let alone the attempt
to carry it out. Man who starves from necessity is not given to
fasting for ascetic purposes. Suffering all kinds of privations from
his birth onwards, living under the constant menace of violent
death, man in the savage state is an unconscious and involuntary
ascetic, and his marvellous endurance has as little moral worth as
the sufferings of small fish pursued by pikes or sharks.

The manifestation of the inner moral power of the spirit over
the flesh presupposes that man is to a certain extent secure from
the destructive powers of external nature. Now such security
cannot be attained by a single individual — it requires social union.
Although ascetic morality in some of its aspects seeks to sever the
social ties, it is clear that such a striving could only have arisen on
the basis of an already existing society. Both in India of the
Brahmins and in Christian Egypt ascetic hermits were the

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 223

product of a civilised social environment. They had spiritually
outgrown it, but without it they themselves would have been
historically and physically impossible. Solitary hermits who had
voluntarily forsaken society for the desert by their very presence
subdued wild beasts, which had no reason whatever for being
subdued by the enforced solitude of vagrant savages, inferior to
them in physical strength, but inwardly very much on their level.
For the victory both over evil beasts without and over evil
passions within a certain amount of civilisation was necessary,
which could only be attained through the development of social life.
Consequently ascetic morality is not the work of the individual
taken in the abstract ; it can only be manifested by man as a
social being. The inner foundations of the good in man do not
depend upon the forms of social life, but the actual realisation of
them does presuppose such forms.

At the early beginnings of social life — at the kinship-group
stage — ascetic morality is purely negative in character. In
addition to the regulation of the sexual life by marriage, we find
prohibitions of certain kinds of food (e.g. of the ' totemic ' animals,
connected with a given social group as its protecting spirits or
as the incarnation of its ancestors), and also the restriction of
meat foods to sacrificial feasts (thus, among the Semitic peoples
especially, the flesh of domestic animals was originally for religious
uses only.1)

But in the conditions of the tribal life asceticism could not
from the very nature of the case go beyond such elementary
restrictions. So long as personal dignity finds its realisation in a
social organisation determined by kinship, or, at any rate, is
conditioned by it, there can be no question of the ideal of com
plete continence or of the moral duty to struggle with such
passions upon which the very existence of the tribe depends.
The virtuous tribesman must be distinguished by vindictiveness
and acquisitiveness, and has no right to dream of perfect purity.
The ideal representative of tribal morality is the Biblical Jacob,
who had two wives and several concubines, who begat twelve sons,
and increased the family property without troubling about the
means whereby he did it.

The formation of the state had an enormous, though indirect,

1 See Robertson Smith's The Religion of the Semites.

224 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

influence upon ascetic morality in the wide sense of the term, i.e.
upon that aspect of morality which is concerned with the material
nature of man and of the world, and aims at the complete mastery
of the rational spirit over the blind material forces. Power over
nature is utterly impossible for a lonely savage or for the bestial man,
and only a rudimentary degree of it is acquired at the barbarous
stage of the tribal life. Under the conditions of civilised existence
in strong and extensive political unions it becomes considerable
and lasting, and is continually on the increase. The means of
spiritual development for the individual, the school of practical
asceticism for the masses of the people, and the beginning of sub
jugating the earth for humanity, is to be found in the military
and theocratic empires which united men into large groups for
carrying on the work of civilisation in four different quarters of
the globe — between the Blue and the Yellow rivers, between the
Ind and the Ganges, between the Tigris and Euphrates, and,
finally, in the valley of the Nile. These military and theocratic
monarchies — which Araktcheev's 'military settlements'1 re
called to us in miniature — were, of course, very far from the ideal
of human society. But their great historical importance as a
necessary moral school for primitive humanity is recognised even
by the champions of absolute anarchism.2

Speaking generally, in order to rise above the compulsory form
of social morality^ savage humanity had to pass through it — in
order to outgrow despotism it had to experience it. More particu
larly, three considerations are undoubtedly involved here, (i)
The harder the original struggle with primitive nature was, the
more necessary it was for men to be united into wide but closely-

1 The so-called ' military settlements ' were villages in which every peasant was
compelled to be a soldier and to live under military discipline. Minute regulations
with regard to the home life, work, dress, etc., were enforced with ruthless severity
and made the life of the settlers intolerable. The idea of establishing military
settlements belonged to Alexander I. and was carried out by Araktcheev, his favourite,
who founded the first settlement in 1810. Military settlements were finally abolished
by Alexander II. in 1857. — Translator's Note.

2 I would like especially to mention the interesting work by Leon Metchnikov,
La Civilisation et les grands jleu-ves. See my article about it, " Iz istorii philosophii "
(Concerning the philosophy of history), in the F'ofrosi Philosophii (1891), and also Professor
Vinogradov's article in the same magazine. One worthy critic imagined that in speaking
of the military theocracy as the historical school of asceticism I was referring to the
personal intentions of the Egyptian Pharaohs and Chaldean kings ! !

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 225

connected communities. And the wide extension of a social group
could only be combined with an intimate and strong tie between
its members by means of the strictest discipline^ supported by the
most powerful of all sanctions, namely, the religious sanction.
Therefore political unions which had for the first time subdued
wild nature and laid the corner-stone of human culture were bound
to have the character of a religious and military monarchy, or of
compulsory theocracy. This work of civilisation done under the
pressure of the moral and the material needs — this * Egyptian
labour ' — was by its very nature a school of human solidarity for
the masses and, from the point of view of its objective purpose
and result, it was the first achievement of collective asceticism
in humanity, the first historical triumph of reason over the blind
forces of matter.

(2) The compulsory character of this collective achievement
prevents us from ascribing ideal worth to it, but does not alto
gether deprive it of moral significance. For compulsion was not
merely material. It rested in the last resort upon the faith of
the masses themselves in the divine character of the power which
compelled them to work. However imperfect in its form and
content that faith might be, to subordinate one's life to it, to
endure at its behest all kinds of privation and hardship, is in any
case a moral course of action. Both its general historical result
and its inner psychological effect upon each individual composing
the mass of the people had the character of true, though imperfect,
asceticism — that is, of victory of the spiritual principle over the
carnal. If the innumerable Chinese genuinely believe that their
Emperor is the son of the sky ; if the Hindus were seriously
convinced that the priests sprang from the head of Brahma and
the kings and princes from his arms ; if the Assyrian king really
was in the eyes of his people the incarnation of the national deity
Assur, and the Pharaoh truly was for the Egyptians the manifesta
tion of the solar deity — then absolute submission to such rulers
was for these peoples a religiously-moral duty, and compulsory
work at their command an ascetic practice. This, however,
did not apply to slaves in the strict sense — prisoners of war to
whom their masters' gods were strange gods. And even apart
from this national limitation the whole structure of these primitive
religiously-political unions was essentially imperfect because the

Q

226 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

gods who received the voluntary and involuntary human sacrifices
(both in the literal and in the indirect sense) did not possess
absolute inner worth. They stood merely for the infinity of force,
not for the infinity of goodness. Man is morally superior to such
gods by his power of renunciation ; and therefore in sacrificing
himself for these gods and their earthly representatives he does not
find the higher for the sake of which it is worth while to sacrifice
the lower. If the meaning of the sacrifice is to be found in the
progress of civilisation, this meaning is purely relative, for progress
itself is obviously only a means, a way, a direction, and not the
absolute and final goal. But human personality contains an element
of intrinsic value, which can never be merely a means — the
possibility, namely, inherent in it, of infinite perfection through
the contemplation of and union with the absolute fulness of being.
A society in which this significance of personality is not recognised
and in which the individual is regarded as having only a relative
value, as a means for political and cultural ends — even the most
lofty ones, — cannot be the ideal human society but is merely a
transient stage of the historical development. This is particu
larly true of the military and theocratic monarchies with which
universal history begins.

(3) The primitive forms of the religiously-political union
were so imperfect that they made further progress inevitable, and
at the same time they naturally produced the external conditions
necessary for that progress. Within the limits of the tribal life
each member of a given social group was both physically and morally
compelled to prey, plunder, and kill, to fight wild beasts, breed cattle,
and produce numerous offspring. Obviously there was no room
there for the higher spiritual development of the human person
ality. It only became possible when, with the compulsory division
of labour in the great religiously-political organisations of the past,
there arose, in addition to the masses doomed to hard physical
work, the leisurely, propertied class of free men. By the side of
warriors there appeared professional priests, scribes, diviners, etc.,
among whom the higher consciousness was first awakened. This
great historical moment is recorded in the Bible in the significant
and majestic story of the best representative of the patriarchal
order, Abraham, with the crowd of his armed dependants, bowing
down before the priest of the Most High, Melchizedek, who was

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 227

without descent and came before him with the gifts of the new
higher culture — bread and wine and the spiritual blessing of Truth
and Peace.1

While by the sword of the great conquerors the hard collective
work of the masses was gradually made to 'extend over a wider
and wider area, securing the external material success of human
culture, the inner work of thought among the leisured and peace
ful representatives of the nationally-theocratic states was leading
human consciousness to a more perfect ideal of individual and
social universallsm.

Ill

In the course of the world-history the first awakening of
human self-consciousness took place in the land where its sleep
had most abounded with fantastic and wild dreams — in India. Xo
the overwhelming variety of Indian mythology corresponded a
confusing variety of religious, political, and customary forms and
conditions of life. Nowhere else had the theocratic order been
so complex and burdensome, so full of national and class exclusive-
ness. Not from Egypt or China, not from the Chaldeans,
Phoenicians, or the Greco-Roman world, but from India have we
borrowed conceptions expressive of the extreme degree of separa
tion between the classes of men 2 and of the denial of human
dignity. The ' pariahs ' were deprived of human dignity as
standing outside the law ; men belonging to castes within the
law and even to the highest of them were deprived of all freedom
owing to a most complex system of religious and customary rites
and regulations. But the more narrow and artificial the fetters
fashioned by the spirit for itself and out of itself, the more they
testify to its inner strength and to the fact that nothing external
can finally bind and conquer it. The spirit awakes from the
nightmare of sacrificial rites, compulsory actions, and ascetic
tortures, and says to itself: All this is my own invention which in
my sleep I took to be reality ; if only I can keep awake, the fear
and the pain will vanish. But what will then remain ? A subtle

1 I am referring here, of course, simply to the historical meaning of the fact, and not
to its mystical significance.

2 Although the word caste is Portuguese and not Indian, it had arisen (in the sense
in question) precisely for the designation of the social relations of India.

228 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and significant, though not at first sight a clear, answer is given
to this question by the religion of awakening. It perpetuates the
moment when human personality turns from external objects into
itself, and comes to know its purely negative or formal infinity
devoid of all definite content. The individual is aware of his
infinitude, freedom, and universality simply because he transcends
all given determination, relation, and character, because he is
conscious of something within himself which is more and higher
than this caste, this nationality, this cult, this manner of life — of
something that is higher than all this. Whatever objective
determination a self-conscious person might put before himself,
he does not stop there ; he knows that he had himself posited it
and that his own creation is not worthy of him and therefore he
forsakes it: c all is empty.' All that belongs to the external world
is rejected, nothing is found to be worthy of existence, but man's
spiritual power of rejecting remains ; and it is very significant
that Buddhism recognises this power not as belonging to the
solitary individual, but as having an individually-social form of
the so-called Triratna^ i.e. * three jewels' or 'three treasures,' in
which every Buddhist must believe : " I take my refuge in the
Buddha ; I take my refuge in the doctrine or the law (Dharma] ;
I take my refuge in the order of the disciples (Sangha]" Thus
even in the consciousness of its negative infinity human personality
cannot remain separate and isolated, but by means of a universal
doctrine is inevitably led to a social organisation.

All is deception except three things that are worthy of belief:
(i) the spiritually-awakened man ; (2) the word of awakening ;
(3) the brotherhood of those who are awake. This is the true
essence of Buddhism which still nurtures millions of souls in
distant Asia.1 This is the first lasting stage of human universalism

1 It should be noted, by the way, that after the fashion set by Schopenhauer, who was
prejudiced in favour of Buddhism, the number of Buddhists is usually exaggerated beyond
all measure ; one hears of 400, 600, 700 million followers of this religion. These
figures would be probable were China and Japan wholly populated by Buddhists. In
truth, however, the teaching of Buddha in its various modifications is the religion of the
masses only in Ceylon, Indo-China, Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia, and among the Bouriats
and Kalmucks ; this amounts at most to 75 or 80 millions. In China and Japan
Buddhism is simply one of the permitted religions which is more or less closely followed
by the educated people, who do not, however, give up their national cult ; in a similar
manner in Russia, for instance, under Alexander I. many Orthodox people used to
frequent the meetings of the Freemasons.

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 229

that rose above the national and political exclusiveness of the
religious and social life.

Born in the country of caste, Buddhism did not in the least
reject the division of society into castes, or seek to destroy it ; its
followers simply ceased to believe in the principle of that organisa
tion, in the absolute hereditary inequality of the classes. Appear
ing in the midst of a nation with a distinct character of its own, it
did not reject nationality, but simply transferred human conscious
ness into the domain of other, universal and super-national ideas.
In consequence of this, this Indian religion, the outcome of
Hindu philosophy, was able, when finally rejected in India, to
take root among many various peoples of different race and
different historic education.

The negative infinity of human personality had been apparent
to individual philosophers before the time of Buddhism.1 But
it was in Buddhism that this view found its first historical
expression in the collective life of humanity. Owing to his
morally-practical universalism which proceeded from the heart
even more than from the mind, Buddha Sakya-muni created a
form of common life hitherto unknown in humanity — the
brotherhood of beggar-monks from every caste and nation, — the
'listeners' (Shravaki) of the true doctrine, the followers of the true
way. Here for the first time the worth of the individual and his
relation to society was finally determined not by the fact of being
born into a certain class or a definite national and political
organisation, but by the inner act of choosing a certain moral
ideal. The theoretical conceptions of the first Buddha and the

1 Many fantastic ideas used to prevail with regard to the antiquity of the Hindu
philosophy, but they are beginning to disappear in the light of the more scientific .
inquiry. Most of their philosophic wealth the Hindus acquired in later times, partly
under the direct influence of Greeks after Alexander the Great, and partly later still
with the help of the Arabs who brought Aristotle to the East no less than to the West.
But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that even the Greeks — not to speak of Arabs
— on their first acquaintance with India found there a peculiar local philosophy of the
1 naked wise men ' (GymnosofAists) as a typical and traditional institution of ancient
standing. From their outward appearance these Indian adamites cannot be identified
with the followers of Buddhism ; most probably they were adepts of ascetic mysticism —
Yoga, which existed before the time of Buddha. Still more ancient was the pantheism
of the Upanishads. There is ground to believe that the immediate forerunner of Sakya-
muni was the author of the system of spiritualistic dualism (expounded in Sankya-
Karika), although the person and even the name of this sage — Kapila — are somewhat
doubtful.

230 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

conditions of life of his monastic brotherhood have undergone a
number of changes in the course of history, but the moral essence
of his teaching and work has remained in a clear-cut, crystallised
form in the Lamaian monasteries of Mongolia and Tibet.

The moral essence of Buddhism as an individually- social
system has, during the two and a half thousand years of its
historical existence, evinced itself as the feeling of religious
reverence for the blessed master, who was the first to awake to
the true meaning of reality, and is the spiritual progenitor of all
who subsequently became awake ; as the demand for holiness or
perfect absence of will (the inner asceticism in contradistinction to
the external mortification of the flesh which had been and still
is practised by the c Gymnosophists,' and which did not satisfy
Buddha Sakya-muni) ; and, finally, as the commandment of universal
benevolence or kindly compassion to all beings. It is this latter,
the simplest and most attractive aspect of Buddhism, that brings
to light the defects of the whole doctrine.

IV

What, from the Buddhistic point of view, is the difference
between the man who is spiritually awake and the man who
is not ? The latter, influenced by the delusions of sense, takes
apparent and transitory distinctions to be real and final, and
therefore desires some things and fears others, is attracted and
repelled, feels love and hate. The one who has awakened from
these dream-'emotions understands that their objects are illusory
and is therefore at rest. Finding nothing upon which it would
be worth his while to concentrate his will, he becomes free from
all willing, preference, and fear, and therefore loses all cause for
dissension, anger, enmity and hatred, and, free from these passions,
he experiences for everything, without exception, the same
feeling of benevolence or compassion. But why should he
experience precisely this feeling ? Having convinced himself
that all is empty^ that the objective conditions of existence are
vain and illusory, the awakened sage ought to enter a state of
perfect impassibility^ equally free both from malice and from pity.
For both these opposed feelings equally presuppose to begin with
a conviction of the reality of living beings j secondly, their

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 231

distinction from one another (e.g. the distinction between the
man who suffers in his ignorance and appeals to my pity, and
the perfectly blessed Buddha who stands in no need of it) ; and,
thirdly, pity, no less than malice, prompts us to perform definite
actions, determined by the objective qualities and conditions
of the given facts. Now all this is absolutely incompatible
with the fundamental principle of universal emptiness and
indifference. The moral teaching of Buddhism demands active
self-sacrifice, which is involved in the very conception of a
Buddha. The perfect Buddha — such as Gautama Sakya-muni
— differs from the imperfect or solitary Buddha (Pratyeka Buddha)
precisely by the fact that he is not satisfied by his own know
ledge of the agonising emptiness of existence, but decides to
free from this agony all living beings. This decision was pre
ceded in his former incarnations by individual acts of extreme
self-sacrifice, descriptions of which abound in Buddhist legends.
Thus in one of his previous lives he gave himself up to be
devoured by a tiger in order to save a poor woman and her
children. Such holy exploits, in contradistinction to the aimless
self-destruction of the ancient ascetics of India, are a direct
means to the highest bliss for every one who is 'awake.' A
well-known and typical story is told of one of the apostles of
Buddhism — Arya-Deva. As he was approaching a city, he
saw a wounded dog covered with worms. To save the dog
without destroying the worms, Arya-Deva cut a piece off his
own body and placed the worms upon it. At that moment both
the city and the dog disappeared from his eyes, and he entered at
once into Nirvana.

Active self-sacrifice out of pity for all living beings, so
characteristic of Buddhist morality, cannot be logically reconciled
with the fundamental principle of Buddhism — the doctrine that
all things are empty and indifferent. To feel equal pity for
every one, beginning with Brahma and Indra, and ending with
a worm, is certainly not opposed to the principle of indifference ;
but as soon as the feeling of universal compassion becomes the
work of mercy, the indifference must be given up. If instead
of a dog with worms, Arya-Deva had met a man suffering from
vice and ignorance, pity to this living creature would require
from him not a piece of his flesh, but words of true doctrine —

232 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

while to address words of rational persuasion to a hungry worm
would be no less absurd than to feed with his own flesh a satisfied,
but erring, man. Equal pity to all beings demands not the same^
but quite a different active relation to each one of them. Even
for a Buddhist this difference proves to be not merely illusory,
for he too would certainly admit that had Arya-Deva not
distinguished a worm or a dog from a human being, and offered
moral books to suffering animals, he would hardly be likely
to have performed any holy exploit and deserved Nirvana. All-
embracing pity necessarily involves discriminating truth^ which
gives each his due : a piece of meat to the animal, and words of
spiritual awakening to the rational being. But we cannot stop
at this. Pity for every one compels me to desire for all and each
the supreme and final blessedness which consists not in satiety,
but in complete freedom from the pain of limited existence
and of the necessity of rebirth. This freedom, this only true
blessedness, the worm — so long as it remains a worm — cannot
attain ; it is possible only to a self-conscious and rational being.
Therefore if I am to extend my pity to the lower creatures,
I cannot be content with simply alleviating their suffering at
a given moment. I must help them to attain the final end
through rebirth in higher forms. But the objective conditions
of existence are rejected by Buddhism as an illusion and empty
dream, and consequently the ascent of living beings up the
ladder of rebirths depends exclusively on their own actions
(the law of Karma). The form of the worm is the necessary
outcome of former sins, and no help from without can lift that
worm to the higher stage of dog or elephant. Buddha himself
could directly act only upon rational self-conscious beings, and
that only in the sense that his preaching enabled them to accept
or to reject the truth, and, in the first case, to escape from the
torture of rebirth, and, in the second, continue to endure it.
The work of salvation that those who are ' awake ' can
accomplish amounts simply to pushing their sleeping neigh
bours, some of whom are awakened by it, while others merely
exchange one series of bad dreams for another, still more
agonising.

The principle of active pity to all living beings, however
true it is in itself, can, from the Buddhist point of view, have

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 233

no real application. We are utterly incapable of bringing true
salvation to the lower creatures, and our power of influencing
rational creatures in this respect is extremely limited. What
ever their commandments and legends may be, the very formula
of the faith1 indicates that the true sphere of moral relations
and activity is for the Buddhist limited to the brotherhood of
those who, like himself, are 'awake,' and support one another
in a peaceful life of contemplation — the last remainder of their
former activities — before they finally pass into Nirvana.

The significance of Buddhism in the world-history lies in the
fact that in it the human individual was for the first time valued
not as the member of a tribe, a caste, a state, but as the bearer
of a higher consciousness, as a being capable of awakening from
the deceptive dream of everyday existence, of becoming free
from the chain of causality. This is true of man belonging to
any caste or nationality, and in this sense the Buddhist religion
signalises a new stage in the history of the world — the universal
as opposed to the particular tribal or national stage. It is clear,
however, that the universality of Buddhism is merely abstract or
negative in character. It proclaims the principle of indifference,
rejects the importance of the caste or the national distinctions,
gathers into a new religious community men of all colours and
classes — and then leaves everything as it was before. The problem
of gathering together the disjecta membra of humanity and forming
out of them a new and higher kingdom, is not even contemplated.
Buddhism does not go beyond the universalism of a monastic order.
When the transition is effected from the clan to the state, the
former independent social wholes — the clans — enter as subordinate
parts into the new and higher whole, the organised political union.
Similarly, the third and highest stage of human development — the
universal — demands that states and nations should enter as con
stituent parts into the all-embracing new organisation. Other
wise, however broad the theoretical principles might be, the
positive significance in concrete life will entirely remain with the
already existing national and political groups. c All men ' and,

1 See above.

234 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

still more, 'all living beings' will simply be an abstract idea
symbolically expressed by the monastery that is severed from life.
Buddhism remains perfectly strange to the task of truly uniting all
living beings, or even the scattered parts of humanity, in a new,
universal kingdom. It therefore proves to be merely the first
rudimentary stage of the human understanding of life.

The personality manifests here its infinite worth in so far as
the absolute self negates all limitation, in so far as it asserts, " I
am not bound by anything, I have experienced all things, and
know that all is an empty dream and I am above it all." Negation
of existence through the knowledge of it — this is in what, from
the Buddhist point of view, the absolute nature of the human
spirit consists. It lifts man above all earthly creatures and even
above all gods, for they are gods by nature only, while the awakened
sage becomes god through his own act of consciousness and will :
he is an auto-god^ a god self-made. All creation is material for
the exercise of will and of knowledge, by means of which the
individual is to become divine. Single individuals who have
entered upon the path that leads to this end form the normal society
or brotherhood (the monastic order) which is included in the
Buddhist confession of faith (I take my refuge ... in the
Sangha). But this society obviously has significance temporarily
only, until its members attain perfection ; in Nirvana communal
life, like all other determinations, must disappear altogether. In
so far as the absolute character of the personality is understood in
Buddhism in the negative sense only, as freedom from all things,
the individual stands in no need of completion. All his relations
to other persons simply form a ladder which is pushed away as soon
as the height of absolute indifference is attained. The negative
character of the Buddhist ideal renders morality itself, as well
as all social life, a thing of purely transitory and conditional
significance.

The religiously-moral feeling of reverence (pietas] has in
Buddhism no true and abiding object. The sage who knows all
things and has become free from everything finds no longer any
thing to worship. When Buddha Sakya-muni attained to the
supreme understanding, not only Indra with the host of all the
Vedanta deities, but the supreme god of the all-powerful priests,
Brahma, came like a humble listener to hear the new doctrine,

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 235

and, becoming enlightened, worshipped the teacher. And yet
Buddha was a man, who by his own power became god or reached
the absolute state — and this is the supreme goal for every human
being. Buddhists reverence the memory and the relics of their
teacher to the point of idolatry, but this is only possible so
long as the worshippers are still imperfect. The perfect
disciple who has attained Nirvana no longer differs from Buddha
himself, and loses all object of religious feeling. Therefore, in
principle, the Buddhist ideal destroys the possibility of the religious
relation, and, in its inmost essence, Buddhism is not only a religion
of negation, but a religion of self-negation.

The altruistic part of morality also disappears at the higher
stages of the true way, for then all distinctions are seen to be
illusory, including those which evoke in us a feeling of pity towards
certain objects, events, and states. " Be merciful to all beings,"
proclaims the elementary moral teaching of the Sutras. u There
are no beings, and all feeling is the fruit of ignorance," declares
the higher metaphysics of Abhidhamma.1 Not even the ascetic
morality has positive justification in Buddhism, in spite of its
monasteries. These monasteries are simply places of refuge for
contemplative souls who have given up worldly vanity and are
awaiting their entrance into Nirvana. But the positive moral
asceticism — struggle with the flesh for strengthening the spirit
and spiritualising the body — lies altogether outside the range of
Buddhist thought. The spirit is for it only the knower, and the
body a phantom known as such. Bodily death, the sight of
which had so struck Prince Siddhartha, merely proves that life is
illusion, from which we must become free ; but no Buddhist
would dream of resurrection. If, however, the supreme goal of
asceticism is absent, the means towards it can have no significance.
From the point of view of absolute indifference ascetic rules, like
all other, lose their own inherent meaning. They are preserved
in the external practice of Buddhism simply as pedagogical means
for spiritual babes, or as the historical legacy of Brahmanism. The
perfect Buddhist will certainly not refrain from plentiful food, or
distinguish between meat and vegetable diet. It is very remark-

1 The Buddhist doctrine is divided into three sections of the Holy Law, called, there
fore, 'The three baskets ' (Tripitaka) : Sutra contains the moral doctrine, Vinaya the
monastic rules, and Abhidhamma the transcendental wisdom.

236 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

able that according to the legend, the truth of which there is no
reason to doubt, the founder of this religion, which is supposed
to demand strict vegetarianism, died of having unwisely partaken
of pig's flesh.

VI

Like every negative doctrine Buddhism is dependent upon
what it denies — upon this material world, this sensuous and mortal
life. "All this is illusion," it repeats — and it gets no further, for
to it this illusion is everything. It knows with certainty only
what it denies. Of what it affirms, of what it regards as not
illusory, it has no positive idea at all, but determines it negatively
only : Nirvana is inaction, immovability, stillness, non-existence. ^
Buddhism knows only the lower, the illusory ; the higher and the '
perfect it does not know, but merely demands it. Nirvana is only
a postulate, and not the idea of the absolute good. The idea came
from the Greeks and not from the Hindus.

Human reason, having discovered its own universal and
absolute nature by rejecting everything finite and particular,
could not rest content with this first step. From the conscious
ness that the material existence is illusory it was bound to pass
to that which is not illusory, to that for the sake of which it
rejected deceptive appearance. In Indian Buddhism the person
ality finds its absolute significance in the rejection of being that is
unworthy of it. In Greek thought, which found its practical
embodiment in Socrates, and was put into a theoretical form by
his pupil, the absolute value of personality is justified by the affirma
tion of being that is worthy of it — of the world of ideas and ideal
relations. Greek idealism no less than Buddhism realises that
all transitory things are illusory, that the flux of material reality
is only the phantom of being, is essentially non-being (rb /IT) ov).
The practical pessimism of the Buddhist is entirely shared by
the Greek consciousness.

" Whoso craves the ampler length of life, not content to
desire a modest span, him will I judge with no uncertain voice :
he cleaves to folly. For the long days lay up full many things
nearer grief than joy ; but as for thy delights, their place shall

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 237

know them no more, when a man's life hath lapsed beyond the
fitting term." 1

Although there is here involved the conception]of measure so
characteristic of the Greek mind, reflection does not stop at this.
Not onlyadisproportionately long life, but all life is nothing but pain.

" Not to be born is, past all prizing, best ; but when a man
hath seen the light, this is next best by far, that with all speed he
should go thither, whence he hath come.

" For when he hath seen youth go by, with its light follies,
what troublous affliction is strange to his lot, what suffering is not
therein ? — envy, frictions, strife, battles, and slaughters ; and last
of all, age claims him for her own — age, dispraised, infirm,
unsociable, unfriended, with whom all woe of woe abides." 2

It was as clear to the Greek higher consciousness as to the
Hindu that human will blindly striving for material satisfaction
cannot find it under any material conditions, and that therefore
the real good from this point of view is not the enjoyment of life
but the absence of life.

"The Deliverer comes at the last to all alike — when the doom
of Hades is suddenly revealed, without marriage song, or lyre, or
dance — even Death at the last."3

This pessimistic conception expressed by poetry was also
confirmed by Greek philosophy in sentences which have become x
the alphabetic truths of all idealistic and spiritualistic morality :^
sensuous life is the prison of the spirit, body is the coffin of the ^
soul, true philosophy is the practice of death, etc. But although
the Greek genius appropriated this fundamental conception of
Buddhism, it did not stop there. The non-sensuous aspect of
reality revealed to it its ideal content. In the place of Nirvana
the Greeks put the Cosmos of eternal intelligible essences
(Platonic Ideas) or the organism of universal reason (in the philo
sophy of the Stoics). Human personality now affirms its
absolute significance not by merely denying what is false, but by
intellectually participating in what is true. The personal bearer
of this higher universal consciousness is not the monk who
renounces the illusion of the real being, in accordance with
the principle of indifference, but the philosopher who shares in
the fulness of the ideal being in the inner unity of its many

1 The Otdiput Coloneus. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid.

238 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

forms. Neither the one nor the other wishes to live by the senses,
but the second lives by his intellect in the world of pure Ideas,
that is, of what is worthy of existence, and is therefore true and
eternal. It is a dualistic point of view : all that exists has a true
positive aspect, in addition to the false, material side. With
regard to the latter the Greek philosophers adopt an attitude as
negative as the Hindu ' Gymnosophists.' That which to the
senses and sensibility is a deceptive appearance contains for reason
ca reflection of the Idea,' according to Plato, or c the seed of
Reason,' according to the Stoics (Adyoi o-Tre/a/xan/cot). Hence in
human life there is an opposition between that which is con
formable to Ideas and in harmony with Reason, and that which
contradicts the ideal norm. The true sage is no longer a simple
hermit or a wandering monk, who has renounced life and is
mildly preaching the same renunciation to others ; he is one who
boldly denounces the wrong and irrational things of life. Hence
the end is different in the two cases. Buddha Sakya-muni peacefully
dies after a meal with his disciples, while Socrates, condemned and
put to prison by his fellow-citizens, is sentenced by them to
drink a poisoned cup. But in spite of this tragic ending, the
attitude of the Greek idealist to the reality unworthy of him is
not one of decisive opposition. The highest representative of
humanity at this stage — the philosopher — is conscious of his
absolute worth in so far as he lives by pure thought in the truly-
existent intelligible realm of Ideas or of the all-embracing
rationality, and despises the false, the merely phenomenal being of
the material and sensuous world. This contempt, when bold and
genuine, rouses the anger of the crowd which is wholly engrossed
with the lower things, and the philosopher may have to pay for
his idealism with his life — as was the case with Socrates. But
in any case his attitude to the unworthy reality is merely one of
contempt. The contempt is certainly different in kind from that
characteristic of Buddhism. Buddha despises the world because
everything is illusion. The very indefiniteness of this judgment,
however, takes away its sting. If all is equally worthless, no
one in particular is hurt by it, and if nothing but Nirvana is
opposed to the bad reality, the latter may sleep in peace. For
Nirvana is an absolute state and not the norm for relative states.
Now the idealist does possess such a norm and he despises and

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 239

condemns the life that surrounds him not because it inevitably
shares in the illusory character of everything, but because it is
abnormal, irrational, opposed to the Idea. Such condemnation is
no longer neutral, it has an element of defiance and demand. It
is slighting to all who are bound by worldly irrationality and
therefore leads to hostility, and sometimes to persecution and the
cup with poison.

And yet there is something accidental about this conflict.
Socrates condemned Athenian customs all his life long but he
was not persecuted for it until he was an old man of seventy ; the
persecution was obviously due to a change in political circum
stances. The irrationality of the Athenian political order was a
local peculiarity ; the customs of Sparta were better. The great
est of Socrates' pupils, Plato, went later on to Sicily in order to
found there, with the help of Dionysius of Syracuse, an ideal state
in which philosophers would receive the reins of government
instead of a cup of poison. He did not succeed, but on
returning to Athens he was able to teach in his academy without
hindrance, and lived undisturbed to a profound old age. The
disciples of Socrates, as well as other preachers of idealism, never
suffered systematic persecution ; they were disliked but tolerated.
The fact is that idealism by the nature of the case has its centre
of gravity in the intelligible world. The opposition it establishes
between the normal and the abnormal, the right and the wrong,
though comparatively definite, remains essentially intellectual and
theoretical. It touches upon the reality it condemns but does
not penetrate to the heart of it. We know how superficial were
the practical ideals of Plato, the greatest of the idealists. They
come much nearer to the bad reality than to what truly is. The
realm of Ideas is an all-embracing, absolutely-universal unity ;
there are no limitations, dissensions, or hostility in it. But Plato's
pseudo-ideal state, though involving some bold conceptions and a
general beauty of form, is essentially connected with such limita
tions of which humanity soon freed itself not in idea only but in
reality. His state of philosophers is nothing more than a narrow,
local, nationally Greek community based upon slavery, constant
warfare, and such relations between the sexes as remind one of
stables for covering. It is clear that the political problem is not
in any inner connection with Plato's main interest and that he

240 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

does not really care in what way men are going to live upon
earth, where truth does not and will not dwell. He finds his own
true satisfaction in the contemplation of eternal intelligible truth.
The natural impulse to realise or embody truth in the environ
ment is checked by two considerations, which idealism necessarily
involves. The first is the conviction that though the ideal truth
can be reflected or impressed upon the surface of real existence,
it cannot become substantially incarnate in it. The second is
the belief that our own spirit is connected with this reality in a
purely transitory and external fashion, and therefore can have no
absolute task to fulfil in it.

The dying Socrates rejoiced at leaving this world of false
appearance for the realm of what truly is. Such an attitude
obviously excludes in the last resort all practical activity ; there
can in that case be neither any obligation nor any desire to devote
oneself to the changing of this life, to the salvation of this world.
Platonic idealism, like Buddhist nihilism, lifts up human person
ality to the level of the absolute, but does not create for it a social
environment corresponding to its absolute significance. The
brotherhood of monks, like the state of philosophers, is merely a
temporal compromise of the sage with the false existence. His
true satisfaction is in the pure indifference of Nirvana, or in
the purely intelligible world of Ideas. Are we to say, then, that
for idealism too the actual life is devoid of meaning ? We discover
at this point so great an inner contradiction in the idealistic line
of thought that human consciousness is unable to stop at this
stage and to accept it as the highest truth.

VII

If the world in which we live did not share in the ideal or the
true being at all, idealism itself would be impossible. The direct
representative of the ideal principle in this world is, of course, the
philosopher himself, who contemplates that which truly is. But
the philosopher did not drop down from heaven ; his reason is
only the highest expression of the universal human reason em
bodied in the word which is an essentially universal fact and is the
real idea or the sensible reason. This was clearly perceived by
Heraclitus, worked out and explained by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle,

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 241

and Zeno the Stoic. But the presence of the higher principle is
not limited to the human world. The purposive organisation and
movements of living creatures and the general teleological con
nection of events provided Socrates himself with his favourite
argument for proving the presence of reason in the world. The
ideal principle, however, is found not only where there is evidence
of purpose ; it extends to all determinate being and excludes only
the principle directly opposed to it — the unlimited, the chaos
(TO a-rretpov = TO p) 6'v). Measure, limit, norm, necessarily in
volve Reason and Idea. But if so, the opposition, so essential for
idealism, between the world of sensible appearances and the world
of intelligible essences proves to be relative and changeable.
Since all determinate existence participates in Ideas, the difference
can only be in the degree of the participation. A plant or an
animal exhibits a greater wealth of definitely-thought content, and
stands in more complex and intimate relations to all other things
than a simple stone or an isolated natural event. Therefore we
must admit that animal and vegetable organisms have a greater
share of the Idea or a greater degree of ideality than a stone or a
pool of water. Further, every human being as possessing the
power of speech or capable of rational thought, presents, as com
pared with an animal, a greater degree of ideality. The same
relation holds between an ignorant man given to passions and
vices and the philosopher whose word is an expression of reason
not only in the formal sense but in its concrete application.
Finally, even philosophers differ from one another in the degree
to which they have mastered the higher truth. This difference
in the degree of rationality in the world, ranging from a cobble
stone to the ' divine ' Plato, is not anything meaningless or
opposed to the Idea. It would be that if reason demanded in
difference and the * Idea ' designated uniformity. But reason is
the universal connectedness of all things, and the Idea is the form
of the inner union of the many in the one. (Take, e.g,, the idea of
the organism which includes many parts and elements subservient
to a common end ; or the idea of the state combining a multitude
of interests in one universal good ; or the idea of science, in which
many pieces of information form a single truth.) Therefore our
reality, in which innumerable things and events are combined and
coexist in one universal order, must be recognised as essentially

R

242 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

rational or conformable to the Idea. Condemnation of this reality
on the part of the idealist can in justice refer not to the general
nature of the world, or to the differences of degree that follow
from it and are essential to the higher unity, but only to such
mutual relation of degrees as does not correspond to their inner
dignity. The Idea of man is not violated but completed by the
fact that in addition to intellect man has active will and sensuous
receptivity. But since intellect, which contemplates universal
truth, is essentially higher than desires and sensations, which are
limited to the particular, it ought to dominate them. If, on the
contrary, these lower aspects gain the upper hand in the life of
man, his Idea becomes distorted and what takes place in him is
abnormal and meaningless. In the same way, the distinction of
state or class is not opposed to the idea of civic community pro
vided the interrelation between the classes is determined by their
inner quality. But if a group of men who have more capacity
for menial work than for knowledge and realisation of higher
truth dominate the community and take into their hands the
government and the education of the people, while men of true
knowledge and wisdom are forced to devote their powers to
physical labour, then the state contradicts its Idea and loses all its
meaning. The supremacy of the lower faculties of the soul over
reason in the individual, and the supremacy of the material class
over the intellectual in society, are instances of one and the same
kind of distortion and absurdity. This is how idealism regards
it when it resolutely denounces the fundamental evil both of the
mental and of the social life of man. It is for thus denouncing
it that Socrates had to die, but, strarige to say, not even this
tragic fact made his disciples realise that in addition to the moral
and political there exists in the world a third kind of evil — the
physical evil, death. This illogical limitation to the first two
anomalies — the bad soul and the bad society, — this artificial break
between the morally- social and the naturally- organic life is
characteristic of the idealist point of view as of an intermediary
and transitional stage of thought, a half-hearted and half-expressed
universalism.

And yet it is clear that the dominion of death in the world of
the living is the same kind of disorder, the same distortion of
degrees, as the mastery of blind passions in the rational soul or the

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 243

mastery of the mob in human society. There is no doubt that
the inwardly purposive structure and life of the organism realises
the ideal principle in nature in a greater measure and a higher
degree than do the elementary forces of inorganic substance. It
is clear then that the triumph of these forces over life, their escape
from its power and the final disruption of the organism by them,
is contradictory to the normal, ideal order, is senseless or anomalous.
Life does not destroy the lower forces of substance but subordinates
them to itself and thereby vivifies them. It is clear that such
subordination of the lower to the higher is the norm, and that
therefore the reverse relation, involving, as it does, the destruction
of the higher form of existence in its given reality, cannot be
justified or pronounced legitimate from the point of view of reason
and of the Idea. Death is not an Idea, but the rejection of the
Idea, the rebellion of blind force against reason. Therefore
Socrates' joy at his death was, strictly speaking, simply an excus
able and touching weakness of an old man wearied by the troubles
of life, and not an expression of the higher consciousness. In a
mind occupied with the essence of things and not with personal
feeling, this death ought to evoke, instead of joy, a double grief.
Grievous was the sentence of death as a social wrong, as the
triumph of the wicked and ignorant over the righteous and the
wise ; grievous was the process of death as a physical wrong, as
the triumph of the blind and soulless power of a poisonous substance
over a living and organised body, the abode of a rational spirit.

All the world — not merely the mental and political, but the
physical world as well — suffers from the violated norm and stands
in need of help. And it can be helped not by the will-lessness of
the ascetic, renouncing all life and all social environment, not by
the intellectual contemplation of the philosopher who lives by
thought alone in the realm of Ideas, but by the living power of the
entire human being possessing absolute significance not negatively
or ideally only, but as a concrete reality. Such a being is the
perfect man or the God-man, who does not forsake the world
for Nirvana or the realm of Ideas, but comes into the world in
order to save it and regenerate it and make it the Kingdom ot
God, so that the perfect individual could find his completion in
the perfect society.

244 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

VIII

The absolute moral significance of human personality demands
perfection or fulness of life. This demand is not satisfied either
by the mere negation of imperfection (as in Buddhism) or by
the merely ideal participation in perfection (as in Platonism
and all idealism). It can only be satisfied by perfection being
actually present and realised in the whole man and in the whole
of human life. This is what true Christianity stands for and
wherein it essentially differs from Buddhism and Platonism.
Without going at present into the metaphysical aspect of Chris
tianity, I am simply referring here to the fact that Christianity
— and it alone — is based upon the idea of the really perfect man
and perfect society, and therefore promises to fulfil the demand for
true infinity, inherent in our consciousness. It is clear that in
order to attain this purpose it is necessary first of all to cease to be
satisfied with the limited and unworthy reality, and to renounce it.
It is equally clear, however, that this is only the first step, and that
if man goes no further he is left with a mere negation. This
first step which the universal human consciousness had to take, but
at which it ought not to stop, is represented by Buddhism. Having
renounced the unworthy reality, I ought to replace it by what is
worthy of existence. But to do so I must first understand or
grasp the very idea of worthy existence — this is the second step,
represented by idealism. And once more it is clear that we
cannot stop at this. Truth which is thinkable only and not
realisable — truth which does not embrace the whole of life — is not
what is demanded, is not absolute perfection. The third and final
step which Christianity enables us to take consists in a positive
realisation of worthy existence in all things.

The Nirvana of the Buddhists is external to everything — it is
negative universalism. The ideal cosmos of Plato represents only
the intelligible or the thinkable aspect of everything — it is incomplete
universalism. The Kingdom of God, revealed by Christianity,
alone actually embraces everything, and is positive, complete, and
perfect universalism. It is clear that at the first two stages of univer
salism the absolute element in man is not developed to the end, and
therefore remains fruitless. Nirvana lies outside the boundaries of
every horizon ; the world of Ideas, like the starry heaven, envelops

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 245

the earth but is not united to it ; the absolute principle incarnate
in the Sun of Truth alone penetrates to the inmost depths of
earthly reality, brings forth a new life, and manifests itself as
a new order of being — as the all-embracing Kingdom of God :
virtus ejus Integra si versa fuerit in terra?n.1 And without the
earth there can be no heaven for man.

We have seen that Buddhism, unable to satisfy the uncondi
tional principle of morality and bring about the fulness of life or
the perfect society, is destructive, when consistently worked out, of
the chief foundations of morality as such. The same thing must
be said with regard to Platonism. Where is a consistent idealist
to find an object for his piety ? The popular gods he regards
sceptically, or at best with wise restraint. The ideal essences,
which are for him the absolute truth, cannot be an object of religious
worship neither for his mortal c body,' which knows nothing
about them, nor for his immortal spirit, which knows them too
intimately and, in immediate contemplation, attains complete
equality with them. Religion and religious morality is a bond
between the higher and the lower — a bond which idealism, with
its dual character, breaks up, leaving on the one side the divine
incorporeal and sterile spirit, and on the other, the material body
utterly lacking in what is divine. But the bond thus severed by
idealism extends farther still. It is the basis of pity as well as
of reverence. What can be an object of pity for a consistent
idealist ? He knows only two orders of being — the false, material,
and the true, ideal being. The false being, as Anaximander of
Miletus had taught before Plato, ought in justice to suffer and to
perish, and it deserves no pity. The true, from its essence, can
not suffer, and therefore cannot excite pity — and this was the
reason why the dying Socrates did nothing but rejoice at leaving
a world unworthy of pity for a realm where there is no object
for it. Finally, idealism provides no real basis for the ascetic
morality either. A consistent idealist is ashamed of the general
fact of having a body, in the words of the greatest of Plato's
followers — Plotinus, but such shame has no significance from the
moral point of view. It is impossible for man so long as he lives
on earth to be incorporeal, and, according to the indisputable rule
ad impossibilia nemo obligatur^ the shame of one's corporeality

1 "Its power is whole when it turns to the earth " (Tabula smaragdina).

246 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

either demands that we should commit suicide or demands nothing
at all.

If instead of taking Buddhism and Platonism to be what they
really were, viz. necessary stages of human consciousness, we regard
either the one or the other as the last word of universal truth, the
question is, what precisely had they given to humanity, what did
they gain for it ? Taken in and for themselves they have neither
given nor promised anything. There had been from all eternity
the opposition between Nirvana and Sansara — empty bliss for the
spiritually awake, and empty pain for the spiritually asleep ; there
had been the inexorable law of causal actions and caused states —
the law of Karma, which through a series of innumerable rebirths
leads a being from painful emptiness to empty bliss. As it was
before Buddha, so it remained after him, and so it will remain for
all eternity. From the point of view of Buddhism itself, not one
of its followers capable of critical reflection can affirm that
Buddha had changed anything in the world order, had created
anything new, had actually saved anyone. Nor is there any room
for promise in the future. The same thing must in the long-run
be said of idealism. There is the eternal realm of intelligible
essences which truly is and the phenomenal world of sensuous
appearance. There is no bridge between the two j to be in the
one means not to be in the other. Such duality has always been
and will remain for ever. Idealism gives no reconciliation in the
present and no promise of it in the future.1

Christianity has a different message. It both gives and
promises to humanity something new. It gives the living image
of a personality possessing not the merely negative perfection
of indifference or the merely ideal perfection of intellectual
contemplation, but perfection absolute and entire, fully realised,
and therefore victorious over death. Christianity reveals to
men the absolutely perfect and therefore physically immortal
personality. It promises mankind a perfect society built upon
the pattern of this personality. And since such a society cannot
be created by an external force (for in that case it would be imper-

1 Plato's thought rose for a moment to the conception of Eros as the bridge between
the world of true being and the material reality, but did not follow it out. In enigmatic
expressions the philosopher indicated this bridge, but was incapable of crossing it him
self or leading others across it.

INDIVIDUALLY-SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 247

feet), the promise of it sets a task before humanity as a whole
and each man individually, to co-operate with the perfect personal
power revealed to the world in so transforming the universe that
it might become the embodiment of the Kingdom of God. The
final truth, the absolute and positive universalism obviously can
not be either exclusively individual or exclusively social : it must
express the completeness and fulness of the individually-social life.
True Christianity is a perfect synthesis of three inseparable
elements : (i) the absolute event — the revelation of the perfect
personality, the God-man — Christ, who had bodily risen from the
dead ; (2) the absolute promise — of a community conformable to the
perfect personality, or, in other words, the promise of the Kingdom
of God ; (3) the absolute task — to further the fulfilment of that
promise by regenerating all our individual and social environment
in the spirit of Christ. If any one of these three foundations is
forgotten or left out of account the whole thing becomes paralysed
and distorted. This is the reason why the moral development and
the external history of humanity have not stopped after the
coming of Christ, in spite of the fact that Christianity is the
absolute and final revelation of truth. That which has been ful
filled and that which has been promised stands firmly wfthin the
precincts of eternity and does not depend upon us. But the task
of the present is in our hands ; the moral regeneration of our life
must be brought about by ourselves. It is with this general
problem that the special task of moral philosophy is particularly
concerned. It has to define and explain, within the limits of
historical fact, what the relation between all the fundamental
elements and aspects of the individually-social whole ought to be
in accordance with the unconditional moral norm.

CHAPTER III

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY
I

AT the historical stage reached by human consciousness in
Christianity, moral life reveals itself as a universal and all-
embracing task. Before going on to discuss its concrete historical
setting, we must consider the view which, on principle, rejects
morality as a historical problem or as the work of collective
man, and entirely reduces it to the subjective moral impulses of
individuals. This view arbitrarily puts such narrow limits to the
human good as in reality it has never known. Strictly speaking,
morality never has been solely the affair of personal feeling or the
rule of private conduct. At the patriarchal stage the moral
demands of reverence, pity, and shame were inseparably connected
with the duties of the individual to his kinsmen. The c moral '
was not distinguished from the 'social,' or the individual from the
collective. And if the result was a morality of rather a low and
limited order, this was not due to the fact of its being a collective
morality, but to the generally low level and narrow limits of the
tribal life, which expressed merely the rudimentary stage of the
historical development. It was low and limited, however, only by
comparison with the further progress of morality, and certainly
not by comparison with the morality of savages living in caves and
in trees. When the state came into being, and the domestic life
became to a certain extent a thing apart, morality in general
was still determined by the relation between individuals and the
collective whole to which they belonged — henceforth a wider
and a more complex one. It was impossible to be moral
apart from a definite and positive relation to the state ;

248

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY 249

morality was in the first place a civic virtue. And the reason
that this virtus antiqua no longer satisfies us, is not that it was
a civic and not merely a domestic virtue, but that the civic life
itself was too remote from the true social ideal, and was merely
a transition from the barbarous to the truly human culture.
Morality was rightly taken to consist in honourably serving the
social whole — the state, but the state itself was based upon slavery,
constant wars, etc. ; what is to be condemned is not the social
character of morality, but the immoral character of the
social whole. In a similar way we condemn the ecclesi
astical morality of the Middle Ages, not of course because it was
ecclesiastical, but because the Church itself was then far from being
a truly moral organisation, and was responsible for evil as well as
for good — the terrible evil of religious persecutions and torture —
thus violating the unconditional principle of morality in its own
inner domain.

Christianity as the c Gospel of the Kingdom ' proclaims an
ideal that is unconditionally high, demands an absolute morality.
Is this morality to be subjective <?«/y, limited to the inner states
and individual actions of the subject ? The question contains its
own answer ; but to make the matter quite clear, let us first grant
all that is true in the exclusively -subjective interpretation of
Christianity. There is no doubt that a perfect or absolute moral
state must be inwardly fully experienced or felt by the subject —
must become his own state, the content of his life. If perfect
morality were recognised as subjective in this sense, the difference
would be purely verbal. But something else is really meant.
The question is, how is this moral perfection to be attained by
the individual ? Is it enough that each should strive to make
himself inwardly better and act accordingly, or is it attained
with the help of a certain social process the effects of which are
collective as well as individual ? The adherents of the former
theory, which reduces everything to individual moral activity,
do not reject, of course, either the social life or the moral im
provement of its forms. They believe, however, that such im
provement is simply the inevitable consequence of the personal
moral progress : like individual, like society. As soon as each
person understands and reveals to others his own true nature, and
awakens good feelings in his soul, the earth will become paradise.

250 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Now it is indisputable that without good thoughts and feelings
there can be neither individual nor social morality. It is equally
indisputable that z/all individual men were good, society would be
good also. But to think that the actual virtue of the few best men
is sufficient for the moral regeneration of all the others, is to pass
into the world where babies are born out of rose-bushes, and where
beggars, for lack of bread, eat cakes. The question we are mainly
concerned with is not whether the individual's moral efforts are
sufficient to make him perfect, but whether those unaided
individual efforts can induce other people^ who are making no
moral efforts at all, to begin to make them.

II

The insufficiency of the subjective good and the necessity for
a collective embodiment of it is unmistakably proved by the whole
course of human history. I will give one concrete illustration.

At the end of Homer's Odyssey it is related, with obvious
sympathy, how this typical hero of the Hellenes re-established
justice and order in his house, having overcome at last the enmity
of gods and men and destroyed his rivals. With his son's help
he executed those of his servants who, during his twenty years'
absence, when everybody had given him up for dead, sided with
Penelope's suitors and did not oppose the latter making themselves
at home in Odysseus's house :

"Now when they had made an end of setting the hall in order,
they led the maidens forth from the stablished hall, and drove
them up in a narrow space between the vaulted room and the
goodly fence of the court, whence none might avoid ; and wise
Telemachus began to speak to his fellows, saying : ' God forbid
that I should take these women's lives by a clean death, these that
have poured dishonour on my head and on my mother, and have
lain with the wooers.' With that word he tied the cable of a
dark-prowed ship to a great pillar and flung it round the vaulted
room, and fastened it aloft, that none might touch the ground
with her feet. And even as when thrushes, long of wing, or
doves fall into a net that is set in a thicket, as they seek to their
roosting-place, and a loathly bed harbours them, even so the
women held their heads all in a row, and about all their necks

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY 251

nooses were cast, that they might die by the most pitiful death.
And they writhed with their feet for a little space, but for no long
while. Then they led out Melanthius through the doorway and the
court and cut off his nostrils and his ears with the pitiless sword,
and drew forth his vitals for the dogs to devour raw, and cut off
his hands and feet in their cruel anger" (Odyssey^ xxii. 457-477).

Odysseus and Telemachus were not monsters of inhumanity ;
on the contrary, they represented the highest ideal of the Homeric
epoch. Their personal morality was irreproachable, they were
full of piety, wisdom, justice, and all the family virtues. Odysseus
had, into the bargain, an extremely sensitive heart, and in spite of
his courage and firmness in misfortune, shed tears at every con
venient opportunity. This very curious and characteristic feature
attaches to him throughout the poem. As I have not in literature
come across any special reference to this peculiar characteristic
of the Homeric hero, I will allow myself to go into some detail.

At his first appearance in the Odyssey he is represented as
weeping : —

" Odysseus ... sat weeping on the shore even as aforetime,
straining his soul with tears and groans and griefs, and as he wept
he looked wistfully over the unharvested deep " (v. 82-84 ; also
151, 152, 156-158).

In his own words : " There I abode for seven years continually,
and watered with my tears the imperishable raiment that Calypso
gave me " (vii. 259-260).

He wept at the thought of his distant native land and family,
and also at remembering his own exploits : —

"... The Muse stirred the minstrel to sing the songs or
famous men. . . . The quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles,
son of Peleus. . . . This song it was that the famous minstrel
sang ; but Odysseus caught his great purple cloak with his
stalwart hands, and drew it down over his head, and hid his
comely face, for he was ashamed to shed tears beneath his brows
in presence of the Phaeacians " (viii. 73-86).

Further : —

"This was the song that the famous minstrel sang. But the
heart of Odysseus melted, and the tear wet his cheeks beneath the
eyelids. And as a woman throws herself wailing about her dead
lord, who hath fallen before his city and the host, warding from

252 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

his town and his children the pitiless day . . . even so pitifully
fell the tears beneath the brows of Odysseus" (viii. 521-525).

He weeps on being told by Circe of the journey — though a
perfectly safe one — he has to make to Hades : —

"Thus spake she, but as for me, my heart was broken, and I
wept as I sat upon the bed, and my soul had no more care to live
and to see the sunlight " (x. 496-499).

It is no wonder that Odysseus weeps when he sees his mother's
shadow (xi. 87), but he is affected just as much by the shadow of
the worst and most worthless of his followers, of whom "an evil
doom of some god was the bane and wine out of measure"
(xi. 61).

"There was one, Elpenor, the youngest of us all, not very
valiant in war, neither steadfast in mind. He was lying apart
from the rest of my men on the housetop of Circe's sacred
dwelling, very fain of the cool air, as one heavy with wine. Now
when he heard the noise of the voices and of the feet of my fellows
as they moved to and fro, he leaped up of a sudden and minded
him not to descend again by the way of the tall ladder, but fell
right down from the roof, and his neck was broken from the bones
of the spine, and his spirit went down to the house of Hades "
(x. 552-56i).

"At the sight of him I wept and had compassion on him"

(xi- 55)-

He weeps, too, at the sight of Agamemnon : —

" Thus we twain stood sorrowing, holding sad discourse, while
the big tears fell fast" (xi. 465-466).

He weeps bitterly at rinding himself at last in his native
Ithaca (xiii. 219-221), and still more so on beholding his son : —

"... In both their hearts arose the desire of lamentation.
And they wailed aloud, more ceaselessly than birds, sea-eagles or
vultures of crooked claws, whose younglings the country folk have
taken from the nest, ere yet they are fledged. Even so pitifully
fell the tears beneath their brows" (xvi. 215-220).

Odysseus shed tears, too, at the sight of his old dog Argus : —

" Odysseus looked aside and wiped away a tear that he easily
hid from Eumaeus" (xvii. 304-305).

He weeps before assassinating the suitors, he weeps as he em
braces the godlike swine-herd Eumaeus, and the goodly cow-herd

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY 253

Philoetius (xxi. 225-227), and also after the brutal murder of the
twelve maid-servants and the goat-herd Melanthius : —

"A sweet longing came upon him to weep and to moan, for
he remembered them every one" (xxii. 500-501).

The last two chapters of the Odyssey also have, of course, an
abundant share of the hero's tears : —

"... in his heart she stirred yet a greater longing to lament,
and he wept as he embraced his beloved wife and true" (xxiii.
231-232).

And further : —

" Now when the steadfast goodly Odysseus saw his father thus
wasted with age and in great grief of heart, he stood still beneath
a tall pear tree and let fall a tear " (xxiv. 233-235).

So far as the personal, subjective feeling is concerned Odysseus
was obviously quite equal to the most developed and highly-strung
man of our own day. Speaking generally, Homeric heroes were
capable of all the moral sentiments and emotions of the heart that
we are capable of — and that not only in relation to their neighbours
in the narrow sense of the term, i.e. to men immediately connected
with them by common interests, but also in relation to people
remote and distant from them. The Phaeacians were strangers
to the shipwrecked Odysseus, and yet what kindly human relations
were established between him and them ! And if, in spite of all
this, the heroes of antiquity performed with a clear conscience deeds
which are now morally impossible for us, this was certainly not
due to their lack of personal, subjective morality. These men were
certainly as capable as we are of good human feelings towards both
neighbours andstrangers. What then is the differenceand whatisthe
ground of the change ? Why is it that virtuous, wise, and sentimental
men of the Homeric age thought it permissible and praiseworthy
to hang frivolous maid-servants like thrushes and to chop unworthy
servants as food for the dogs, while at the present day such actions
can only be done by maniacs or born criminals ? Reasoning in
an abstract fashion one might suppose that although the men of
that distant epoch had good mental feelings and impulses, they had
no conscious good principles and rules. Owing to the absence of
a formal criterion between right and wrong, or a clear consciousness
of the distinction between good and evil, morality was purely
empirical in character, and even the best of men, capable of the

254 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

finest moral emotions, could indulge unchecked in wild outbursts
of brutality. In truth, however, we find no such formal defect in
the thought of the ancients.

Men of antiquity, just like ourselves, both had their good and
bad qualities as a natural fact, and drew the distinction of principle
between good and evil, recognising that the first was to be
preferred unconditionally to the second. In those same poems of
Homer which often strike us by their ethical barbarisms, the idea
of moral duty appears with perfect clearness. Certainly Penelope's
mode of thought and expression does not quite coincide with
that of Kant; nevertheless the following words of the wife of
Odysseus contain a definite affirmation of the moral good as an
eternal, necessary, and universal principle : —

" Man's life is brief enough ! And if any be a hard man and
hard at heart, all men cry evil on him for the time to come, while
yet he lives, and all men mock him when he is dead. But if any
be a blameless man and blameless of heart, his guests spread abroad
his fame over the whole earth^ and many people call him noble "
(xix. 328-334).

Ill

The form of moral consciousness, the idea, namely, of the good
as absolutely binding and of evil as absolutely unpermissible, was
present in the mind of the ancients as it is in our own. It might
be thought, however, that the important difference between us
and them in the moral valuation of the same actions is due to
the change in the actual content of the moral ideal. There can be
no doubt that the Gospel has raised our ideal of virtue and holiness
and made it much higher and wider than the Homeric ideal. But
it is equally certain that this perfect ideal of morality, when it has
no objective embodiment and is accepted purely in the abstract,
produces no change whatever either in the life or in the actual
moral consciousness of men, and does not in any way raise their
practical standards for judging their own and other people's actions.

It is sufficient to refer once more to the representatives of
mediaeval Christianity, who treated the supposed enemies of their
Church with greater cruelty than Odysseus treated the enemies
of his family — and did so with a clear conscience, and even with

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY 255

the conviction of fulfilling a moral duty. At a time more en
lightened and less remote the American planters who belonged to
the Christian faith, and therefore stood under the sign of an un
conditionally high moral ideal, treated their black slaves on the
whole no better than the pagan Odysseus treated his faithless
servants, and, like him, considered themselves right in doing so.
So that not only their actions but even their practical consciousness
remained unaffected by the higher truth which they theoretically
professed in the abstract.

I. I. Dubasov's Historical Sketches of the Tambov District
contain an account of the exploits of K., a landowner in the
district of Yelatma, who flourished in the 'forties of the present
century. The Commission of Inquiry established that many serfs
(children especially) had been tortured by him to death, and that
on his estate there was not a single peasant who had not been
flogged, and not a single serf-girl who had not been outraged. But
more significant than this 'misuse of power' was the relation of
the public to it. When cross-examined, most of the gentry in
the district spoke of K. as 'a true gentleman.' Some added,
"K. is a true Christian and observes all the rites of the Church."
The Marshal of Nobility wrote to the Governor of the province :
" All the district is alarmed by the troubles of Mr. K." In the
end the ' true Christian ' was excused from legal responsibility,
and the local gentry could set their hearts at rest.1 The same
sympathy from men of his own class was enjoyed by another and
still more notorious Tambov landowner, Prince U. N. G — n, of
whom it was written with good reason to the Chief of the Police :
" Even animals on meeting U. N. instinctively seek to hide wher
ever they can." 2

Some three thousand years elapsed between the heroes of
Homer and the heroes of Mr. Dubasov, but no essential and stable
change had taken place in the conduct and the moral consciousness
of men with regard to the enslaved part of the population. The
same inhuman relations that were approved of by the ancient
Greeks in the Homeric age were regarded as permissible by the
American and Russian slave -owners in the first half of the
nineteenth century. These relations are revolting to us now,

1 Ocherki ;'« istorii Tambo-vskago Kraia, by I. I. Dubasov, vol. i., Tambov,
pp. 162-167. 2 Ibid. p. 92.

256 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

but our ethical standards have been raised not in the course of the
three thousand years, but only of the last thirty years (in our case
and that of the Americans, and a few dozens of years earlier in
Western Europe). What, then, had happened so recently ?
What has produced in so short a period the change which long
centuries of historical development were unable to accomplish ?
Has some new moral conception, some new and higher ideal of
morality appeared in our day ?

There has been and there could have been nothing of the kind.
No ideal can be conceived higher than that revealed eighteen
hundred years ago. That ideal was known to the c true Christians'
of the American States and the Russian provinces. They could
learn no new idea in this respect ; but they experienced a new fact.
The idea restricted to the subjective sphere of personal morality
could not during thousands of years bear the fruit which it bore in
the course of the few years when it was embodied as a social force,
and became the common task. Under very different historical
conditions the organised social whole invested with power decided,
both in America and in Russia, to put an end to the too glaring
violation of Christian justice — both human and divine — in the life
of the community. In America it was attained at the price of
blood, through a terrible civil war ; in Russia — by the authoritative
action of the Government. It is owing to this fact alone that the
fundamental demands of justice and humanity, presupposed by
the supreme ideal though not exhaustive of it, were transferred
from the narrow and unstable limits of subjective feeling to the
wide and firm ground of objective reality and transformed into
a universally binding law. And we ,see that this external
political act immediately raised the standard of our inner con
sciousness, that is, achieved a result which millenniums of moral
preaching alone could not achieve. The social movement and the
action of the Government were of course themselves conditioned by
the previous moral preaching, but that preaching had effect upon
the majority, upon the social environment as a whole, only when
embodied in measures organised by the Government. Owing
to external restraint, brutal instincts were no longer able to find
expression j they had to pass into a state of inactivity, and were
gradually atrophied from lack of exercise ; in most people they
disappeared altogether and were no longer passed on to the

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY 257

generations that followed. At present even men who openly sigh
for the serfdom make sincere reservations with regard to the abuse
of the owners' power, while forty years ago that abuse was
regarded as compatible with c true nobility,' and even with * true
Christianity.' And yet there is no reason to believe that the
fathers were intrinsically worse than the sons.

Let it be granted that the heroes of Mr. Dubasov's chronicle,
whom the Tambov gentry defended simply from class interests,
were really below the average of the society around them. But
apart from them there was a multitude of perfectly decent men,
free from all brutality, who conscientiously felt they had a right to
make full use of the privileges of their class — for instance, to sell
their serfs like cattle, retail or wholesale. And if such things are
now impossible even for scoundrels, — however much they might
wish for them, — this objective success of the good, this concrete
improvement of life cannot possibly be ascribed to the progress of
personal morality.

- moral nature of man is unchangeable in its inner

subjective foundations. The relative number of good and bad
men also, probably, remains unchanged. It would hardly be
argued by any one that there are now more righteous men than
there were some hundreds or thousands of years ago. Finally,
there can be no doubt that the highest moral ideas and ideals,
taken in the abstract, do not as such produce any stable improve
ment in life and in moral consciousness. I have referred to an
indisputable and certain fact of history : the same and even worse
atrocities which were committed by a virtuous pagan of the
Homeric poem with the approval of the community were done
thousands of years after him by the champions of Christian faith
— the Spanish inquisitors, and by Christian slave-owners, also
with the approval of the community, and this in spite of the fact
that a higher ideal of individual morality has meanwhile been
evolved. In our day such actions are only possible for lunatics
and professional criminals. And this sudden progress is solely due
to the fact that the organised social force was inspired by moral
demands and transformed them into an objective law of life.

258 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

IV

The principle of the perfect good revealed in Christianity does
not abolish the external structure of human society, but uses it as
a form and an instrument for the embodiment of its own absolute
moral content. It demands that human society should become
morally organised. Experience unmistakably proves that when
the social environment is not morally organised, the subjective
demands of the good in oneself and in others are inevitably lowered.
It is not, then, really a choice between personal or subjective
and social morality, but between weak and strong, realised and
unrealised morality. At every stage the moral consciousness in
evitably strives to realise itself both in the individual and in the
society. The final stage differs from the lower stages, not, of
course, by the fact that morality at its highest remains for ever
subjective, i.e. powerless and unrealised — this, indeed, would be a
strange advantage! — but by the fact that the realisation must be
full and all-embracing^ and therefore requires a far more difficult,
long, and complex process than was necessary in the case of the
former collective embodiments of morality. In the patriarchal life
the degree of the good of which it is capable becomes realised
freely and easily — without any history. The formation of exten
sive nationally political groups, which is to realise a greater sum
and a higher grade of the good, fills many centuries with its
history. The moral task left us by Christianity — to form the
environment for the actual realisation of absolute and universal
good — is infinitely more complex. The positive conception of
this good embraces the totality of human relations. Humanity
morally regenerated cannot be poorer in content than natural
humanity. The task then consists not in abolishing the
already existing social distinctions, but in bringing them into
right, good, or moral relation with one another. When the
higher animal forms came to be evolved in the course of the
cosmical process, the lower form — that of worm — was not ex
cluded as intrinsically unworthy, but received a new and more
fitting position. It ceased to be the sole and obvious foundation
of life, but decently clothed it still exists within the body in the
form of the alimentary canal — a subservient part of the organism.

ABSTRACT SUBJECTIVISM IN MORALITY 259

Other forms, predominant at the lower stages, were also preserved,
both materially and formally, as subordinate constituent parts and
organs of a higher whole. In a similar way, Christian humanity
— the highest form of collective spiritual life — finds realisation
not by destroying the different forms of the social life evolved in
the course of history, but by bringing them into due relation to
itself and to each other, in harmony with the unconditional prin
ciple of morality.

The demand for such harmony deprives moral subjectivism,
based on the wrongly conceived view of the autonomy of the will,
of all justification. The moral will must be determined to action
solely through itself; any subordination of it to an external rule
or command violates its autonomy and must therefore be recog
nised as unworthy — this is the true principle of moral autonomy.
But the organisation of social environment in accordance with
the principle of the absolute good is not a limitation but a fulfilment
of the personal moral will — it is the very thing which it desires.
As a moral being I want the good to reign upon earth, I know
that alone I cannot bring this to pass, and I find a collective
organisation intended for this purpose of mine. It is clear that
such an organisation does not in any sense limit me but, on the
contrary, removes my individual limitations, widens and strengthens
my moral will. Every one, in so far as his will is moral, inwardly
participates in this universal organisation of morality, and it is
clear that relative external limitations, which may follow therefrom
for the individual persons, are sanctioned by their own higher
consciousness and consequently cannot be opposed to moral freedom.
For the moral individual one thing only is important in this con
nection, namely, that the collective organisation should be really
dominated by the unconditional principle of morality, that the social
life should indeed conform to moral standards — to the demands of
justice and mercy in all human affairs and relations — that the
individually-social environment should really become the organised
good. It is clear that in subordinating himself to a social environ
ment which is itself subordinate to the principle of the absolute good
and conformable to it, the individual cannot lose anything. Such
a social environment is from the nature of the case incompatible
with any arbitrary limitation of personal rights and still less with
rude violence or persecution. The degree of subordination of the

260 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

individual to society must correspond to the degree of subordination
of society to the moral good, apart from which social environment
has no claim whatever upon the individual. Its rights arise
simply from the moral satisfaction which it gives to every person.
This aspect of moral universalism will be further developed and
explained in the next chapter.

As to the autonomy of the bad will, no organisation of the
good can prevent conscious evil-doers from desiring evil for its
own sake and from acting in that direction. The organisation of
the good is concerned merely with external limitations of the
evil reality — limitations that inevitably follow from the nature
of man and the meaning of history. These objective limits to
objective evil, necessarily presupposed by the organisation of
the good but not by any means exhaustive of it, will be dis
cussed later on in the chapters on punishment and on the relation
between legal justice and morality.

CHAPTER IV

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE

THE true definition of society as an organised morality disposes of
the two false theories that are fashionable in our day — the view of
moral subjectivism which prevents the moral will from being con
cretely realised in the life of the community, and the theory of
social realism^ according to which given social institutions and in
terests are of supreme significance in and for themselves, so that
the highest moral principles prove at best to be simply the means or
the instrument for safeguarding those interests. From this point
of view, at present extremely prevalent, this or that concrete form
of social life is essential per se^ although attempts are made to give
it a moral justification by connecting it with moral norms and
principles. But the very fact of seeking a moral basis for human
society proves that neither any concrete form of social life nor
social life as such is the highest or the final expression of human
nature. If man were defined as essentially a social animal (£3ov
TToAtrtKoi/) and nothing more^ the intension of the term * man ' would
be very much narrowed and its extension would be considerably
increased. Humanity would then include animals such as ants, of
whom social life is as essential a characteristic as it is of man.
Sir John Lubbock, the greatest authority on the subject, writes :
" Their nests are no mere collections of independent individuals,
nor even temporary associations like the flocks of migratory birds,
but organised communities labouring with the utmost harmony
for the common good." l These communities sometimes contain
a population so numerous that, in the words of the same naturalist,

1 Ants, Bees, and Wasps, by Sir John Lubbock, yth ed., p. 119.
261

262 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

of human cities London and Pekin can alone be compared to
them.1 Far more important are the three following inner
characteristics of the ants' community. They have a complex
social organisation. There is a distinct difference between differ
ent communities in the degree of that organisation — a difference
completely analogous to the gradual development in the forms of
human culture from the hunting to the agricultural stage. It
proves that the social life of ants did not arise in any accidental
or exceptional fashion but developed according to certain general
sociological laws. Finally, the social tie is remarkably strong and
stable, and there is wonderful practical solidarity between the
members of the ants' community, so far as the common good is
concerned.

With regard to the first point, if division of labour be the
characteristic feature of civilised life, it is impossible to deny
civilisation to ants. Division of labour is in their case carried
out very sharply. They have very brave soldiers armed with
enormously developed pincer-like jaws by which they adroitly
seize and snap off the heads of their enemies, but who are in
capable of doing anything else. They have workmen remarkable
for their skill and industry. They have gentlemen with opposite
characteristics who go so far that they can neither feed them
selves nor move about and only know how to use other ants'
services. Finally, they have slaves (not to be confused with
workmen2) who are obtained by conquest and belong to other
species of ants, which fact does not, however, prevent them from
being completely devoted to their masters. Apart from such
division of labour, the high degree of civilisation possessed by ants
is proved by their keeping a number of domestic animals (i.e.
tamed insects belonging to other zoological groups), "So that we
may truly say," Sir John Lubbock remarks, of course with some
exaggeration, " that our English ants possess a much greater variety
of domestic animals than we do ourselves." 3

Some of these domestic insects carefully brought up by ants
serve for food (in particular the plant-lice aphidae^ which Linnaeus

1 Ants, Bees, and Wasps, by Sir John Lubbock, yth ed., p, 119.

2 Working ants (like working bees) do not form a distinct species ; they are de
scended from the common queen but are sexually under-developed.

* Ibid. p. 73.

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 263

calls ants' cows (Aphis formicarum vacca] ; others perform certain
necessary work in the community, e.g. act as dustmen ; the third,
in Lubbock's opinion, are kept simply for amusement like our
pug-dogs or canaries. The entomologist Andr6 has made a list
of 584 species of insects which are usually found in ants' com
munities.

At the present time many large and well-populated communities

of ants live chiefly on the large stores of vegetable products they

collect. Crowds of working ants skilfully and systematically cut

blades of grass and stems of leaves — reap them, as it were. But

this semblance of agriculture is neither their only nor their original

means of subsistence. " We find," writes Lubbock, " in the

different species of ants different conditions of life, curiously

answering to the earlier stages of human progress. For instance,

some species, such as Formica fusca^ live principally on the produce

of the chase ; for though they feed partly on the honey-dew of

aphides, they have not domesticated those insects. These ants

probably retain the habits once common to all ants. They resemble

the lower races of men, who subsist mainly by hunting. Like

them they frequent woods and wilds, live in comparatively small

communities, and the instincts of collective action are but little

developed among them. They hunt singly, and their battles are

single combats, like those of the Homeric heroes. Such species

as Lassius flavus represent a distinctly higher type of social life ;

they show more skill in architecture, may literally be said to have

domesticated certain species of aphides, and may be compared to

the pastoral stage of human progress, to the races which live on the

produce of their flocks and herds. Their communities are more

numerous ; they act much more in concert j their battles are not

mere single combats, but they know how to act in combination.

I am disposed to hazard the conjecture that they will gradually

exterminate the mere hunting species, just as savages disappear

before more advanced races. Lastly, the agricultural nations may

be compared with the harvesting ants. Thus there seem to be

three principal types, offering a curious analogy to the three great

phases — the hunting, pastoral, and agricultural stages in the history

of human development."1

In addition to the complexity of social structure and the

1 P. 91.

264 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

graduated stages in the development of culture, ants' societies are
also noted, as has been said above, for the remarkable stability of
the social tie. Our author continually remarks on l the greatest
harmony that reigns between members of one and the same com
munity.' This harmony is exclusively conditioned by the common
good. On the ground of many observations and experiments, Sir
John Lubbock proves that whenever an individual ant undertakes
something useful for the community and exceeding its own powers,
e.g. attempts to bring to the ant-heap a dead fly or beetle it has
come across, it always calls and finds comrades to help it. When,
on the contrary, an individual ant gets into trouble which concerns
it alone, this does not as a rule excite any sympathy whatever and
no help is rendered to it. The patient scientist had a number of
times brought separate ants into a state of insensibility by chloroform
or spirits and found that their fellow-citizens either did not take the
slightest notice of the unfortunate ones or threw them out as dead.
Tender sympathy with personal grief is not connected with any
social function and therefore does not form part of the idea of social
life as such. But the feeling of civic duty or the devotion to
general order are so great among ants that they never have any
quarrels or civil wars. Their armies are intended solely for outside
wars. And even in the highly developed communities, which have
a special class of dustmen and a breed of domestic clowns, not a
single observer could discover any trace of organised police or
gendarmerie.

II

Social life is at least as essential a characteristic of these insects
as it is of man. If, however, we do not admit that they are equal
to ourselves — if we do not agree to bestow upon each of the in
numerable ants living in our forests the rights of man and of
citizen, it means that man has another and a more essential
characteristic, one that is independent of social instincts and, on
the contrary, conditions the distinctive character of human society.
This characteristic consists in the fact that each man, as such, is
a moral being — i.e. a being who, apart from his social utility, has
absolute worth and absolute right to live and freely develop his
positive powers. It directly follows from this that no man under

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 265

any conditions and not for any reason may be regarded as only a means
for purposes extraneous to himself. We cannot be merely an
instrument either for the good of another person or for the good of a
whole class or even for the so-called common good^ i.e. the good of
the majority of men. This t common good ' or < general utility '
has a claim not upon man as a person, but upon his activity or
work to the extent to which that work, being useful for the com
munity, secures at the same time a worthy existence to the worker.
The right of the person as such is based upon his human dignity
inherent in him and inalienable, upon the formal infinity of reason
in every human being, upon the fact that each person is unique and
individual, and must therefore be an end in himself and not merely
a means or an instrument. This right of the person is from its
very nature unconditional^ while the rights of the community with
regard to the person are conditioned by the recognition of his in
dividual rights. Society, therefore, can compel a person to do
something only through an act of his own will, — otherwise it will
not be a case of laying an obligation upon a person, but of making
use of a thing. This does not mean, of course (as one of my
critics imagined), that in order to pass a legal or administrative
measure, the central power must ask the individual consent of each
person. The moral principle in its application to politics logically
involves not an absurd liberum veto of this kind, but the right of
each responsible person freely to change his allegiance as well as
his religion. In other words, no social group or institution has a
right forcibly to detain any one among its members.

The human dignity of each person or his nature as a moral
being does not in any way depend upon his particular qualities or
his social utility. Such qualities and utility may determine man's
external position in society and the relative value set upon him by
other people ; they do not determine his own worth and his human
rights. Many animals are by nature far more virtuous than many
human beings. The conjugal virtue of pigeons and storks, the
maternal love of hens, the gentleness of deer, the faithfulness and
devotion of dogs, the good nature of seals and dolphins, the industry
and civic virtues of ants and bees, etc., are characteristic qualities
adorning our younger brothers, while they are by no means pre
dominant in the majority of human beings. Why is it then that
it has never occurred to any one to deprive the most worthless of

266 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

men of his human rights in order to pass them to the most excellent
of animals as a reward for its virtue ? As to utility, not only one
strong horse is more useful than a number of sick beggars, but
even inanimate objects, such as the printing-press or the steam-
boiler, have undoubtedly been of far more use to the historical
process as a whole than entire tribes of savages or barbarians.
And yet if (per impossible] Gutenberg and Watt had, for the sake
of their great inventions, intentionally and consciously to sacrifice
the life even of a single savage or barbarian, the usefulness of their
work would not prevent their action from being decidedly con
demned as immoral — unless indeed the view be taken that the
purpose justifies the means.

If the common good or the general happiness is to have the
significance of a moral principle, they must be in the full sense
general, i.e. they must refer not merely to many or to the
majority of men but to all without exception. That which is
truly the good of all is for that very reason the good of each —
no one is excluded and, therefore, in serving such a social good as
an end, the individual does not thereby become merely a means
or an instrument of something extraneous and foreign to himself.
True society which recognises the absolute right of each person
is not the negative limit but the positive complement of the
individual. In serving it with whole-hearted devotion, the in
dividual does not lose but realises his absolute worth and signifi
cance. For when taken in isolation he is only potentially absolute
and infinite, and becomes so actually only by being inwardly
united to all.1

The only moral norm is the principle of human dignity or of the
absolute worth of each individual^ in virtue of which society is
determined as the inward and free harmony of al!.2 It is just as im
possible that there should be many moral norms in the strict sense
of the term, as it is impossible that there should be many supreme
goods or many moralities. It is not difficult to show that religion
(as concretely given in history), family, and property do not as
such contain a moral norm in the strict sense of the term. A

1 See above, Part III., Chapter I., 'The Individual and Society.'

2 This position is logically established in moral philosophy in its elementary part,
which, thanks to Kant, became as strictly scientific in its own sphere as pure mechanics
is in another.

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 267

thing which, taken by itself, may or may not be moral, must
obviously be determined as one or the other by means of something
else. It cannot, therefore, be a moral norm on its own account
— that is, it cannot give to other things a character which
it itself does not possess. Now there is no doubt that religion
may or may not be moral. Such religions as, for instance, the cult
of Moloch or Astarte (the survivals or analogies of which are to
be met now and then to this day), cannot possibly serve as a moral
norm of anything, since their very essence is directly opposed to
all morality. When, therefore, we are told that religion is the
norm and the moral foundation of society, we must first see
whether religion itself has a moral character and agrees with the
principle of morality ; and this means that the ultimate criterion
is that principle and not religion as such. The only reason why
we regard Christianity as the true foundation and norm of all that
is good in the world is that, being a perfect religion, Christianity
contains the unconditional moral principle in itself. But if a
separation be introduced between the demand for moral perfection
and the actual life of Christian society, Christianity at once loses
its absolute significance and becomes historically accidental.

If now we take the family, it cannot be denied that the family
too may or may not be moral, both in individual cases and in the
whole given structure of society. Thus the family of ancient
Greece had no moral character. I refer not to the exceptional
heroic families in which wives murdered their husbands and were
killed by their sons, or sons killed their fathers and married their
mothers, but to the usual normal family of a cultured Athenian,
which required as its necessary complement the institution of
hetaeras and worse things than that. The Arabic family (before
Islam), in which new-born girl babies, if there were more than
one or two of them, were buried alive, had no moral character
either, though it was stable in its way. The very stable family
of the Romans in which the head of the house had the right of
life and death over his wife and children, also cannot be said to
have been moral. Thus the family, like religion, has no intrinsic
ally moral character, and, before it can become the norm for any
thing else, must itself be put upon a moral basis.

As to property, to recognise it as the moral foundation of
normal society, i.e. as something sacred and inviolable, is neither

logically nor, in my own case (and I think in that of my con
temporaries), psychologically possible. The first awakening of
conscious life and thought in our generation was accompanied by
the thunder of the destruction of property in its two fundamental
historical forms of serfdom and slavery. And this abolition of
property, both in America and in Russia, was demanded and ac
complished in the name of social morality. The alleged inviolability
was brilliantly disproved by the fact of so successful a violation,
approved by the conscience of all. It is obvious that property is
a thing which stands in need of justification, and so far from con
taining a moral norm, demands such a norm for itself.

All historical institutions — whether religious or social — are of
a mixed character. But there is no doubt that the moral norm
can only be found in a pure principle, and not in a mixed fact.
A principle which unconditionally affirms that which ought to be
is something essentially inviolable. It may be rejected and
disobeyed, but this is detrimental not to the principle but to the
person who rejects and disobeys it. The law which proclaims
' you ought to respect the human dignity of each person, you ought
to make no one a means or an instrument,' does not depend upon
any fact, does not affirm any fact, and therefore cannot be affected
by any fact.

The principle of the absolute worth of human personality
does not depend upon any one or anything ; but the moral char
acter of societies and institutions depends entirely upon it. We
know in ancient and modern heathendom of highly civilised great
national bodies in which the institutions, of family, of religion, of
property were extremely stable, but which nevertheless were
devoid of the moral character of a human society. At best they
resembled communities of wise insects in which the mechanism
of the good order is present, but that which the mechanism is
to subserve — the good itself — is absent, for the bearer of it, the
free personality, is not there.

Ill

A vague and distorted consciousness of the essence of morality
and of the true norm of human society exists even where the
moral principle has apparently no application. Thus, in the

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 269

despotic monarchies of the East, the real man or person was
rightly regarded as possessed of full rights, but such dignity was
ascribed to one man only. Thus transformed, however, into an
exclusive and externally determined privilege, human right and
worth loses its moral character. The sole bearer of it ceases
to be a person, and since as a concrete real being it cannot
become a pure ideal, it becomes an idol. The moral principle
demands of the individual that he should respect human dignity
as such — that is, should respect it in other people as in himself.
It is only in treating others as persons that the individual is
himself determined as a person. The Eastern despot, however,
finds in his world no persons possessed of rights, but only rightless
things. And since it is thus impossible for him to have personal
moral relations to any one, he inevitably himself loses his personal
moral character, and becomes a thing — the most important,
sacred, divine, worshipped thing — in short, a fetish or an idol.

In the civic communities of the classical world the fulness of
rights was the privilege not of one man but of a few (in the
aristocracies) or of many (in the democracies). This extension
was very important for it rendered possible, though within narrow
limits only, independent moral interaction of individuals, and
consequently personal self-consciousness, and realised, at any rate
for the given social union, the idea of justice or equality of rights.1
But the moral principle is in its essence universal, since it
demands the recognition of the absolute inner worth of man as
such, without any external limitations. The communities of the
ancients, however, — the aristocracy of Sparta, the Athenian
demos, and the peculiar combination of the two — senatus populusque
Romanus — recognised the true dignity of man only within the
limits of their civic union. They were not therefore societies
based upon the moral principle, but at best approached and
anticipated such a society.

This structure of life has more than merely a historical
interest for us : in truth, we have not outlived it yet. Consider,
indeed, what it was that limited the moral principle and prevented

1 In the despotic monarchies of the East there could be no question of any equality
of rights — there was only the negative equality of general rightlessness. But equal
distribution of an injustice does not render it just. The idea of equality taken in the
abstract is mathematical only, not ethical.

270 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

its realisation in the world of antiquity. There were three
classes of men who were not recognised as bearers of any rights or
as objects of any duties. They were therefore in no sense an end
of action, were not included in the idea of the common good at all,
and were regarded merely as material instruments of, or material
obstacles to, that good. Namely, these were (i) enemies^ i.e.
originally all strangers,1 then (2) slaves^ and, finally, (3) criminals.
In spite of individual differences the legalised relation to these
three categories of men was essentially the same, for it was
equally immoral. There is no need to represent the institution
of slavery, which replaced the simple slaughter of the prisoners of
war, in an exaggeratedly horrible form. Slaves had means of
livelihood secured to them, and on the whole were not badly
treated. This, however, was an accident — though one of frequent
occurrence — and not a duty, and, therefore, had no moral signi
ficance. Slaves were valued for their utility, but this had nothing
to do with the recognition of their worth as human beings. In
contradistinction to these useful things, which ought to be looked
after for reasons of expediency, external and internal enemies, as
things unquestionably harmful^ were to be mercilessly extermin
ated. With regard, however, to the enemy in war, mercilessness
might be tempered by the respect for his force or the fear of
revenge ; but with regard to defenceless criminals, real or
supposed, cruelty knew no limits. In cultured Athens, persons
accused of ordinary crimes were tortured as soon as they were
taken into custody, previously to any trial.

All these facts — war, slavery, executions — were legitimate for
the ancient world, in the sense' that they logically followed from

1 Hospitality to peaceful strangers is a fact of very ancient date, but can hardly be
said to be primitive. In Greece its founder was supposed to be Zeus — the repre
sentative of the third generation of gods (after Chronos and Uranus). Before being a
guest in the sense of simply a friendly visitor, the stranger was a ' guest ' in the sense of
' merchant,' and earlier still he was only regarded in the sense of the Latin hostis
(enemy). In times still more ancient, accounts of which have been handed down in
classical tradition, a good guest was met with still greater joy than in the later,
hospitable times, but only as a savoury dish at the family feast. Apart from such
extremes, the prevalent attitude to strangers in primitive society was no doubt
similar to that observed by Sir John Lubbock among ants. When a stranger ant
belonging to a different community, though one of the same species, came to an
ant heap, ants would drag it about for a while by its antennae till it was half-dead, and
then either finish it off or drive it away.

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 271

the view held by every one, and were conditioned by the general
level of consciousness. If the worth of man as an independent
individual and the fulness of his rights and dignity depend
exclusively upon his belonging to a certain civic union, the
natural consequence is that men who do not belong to that union
and are strange and hostile to it, or men who, though they belong
to it, violate its laws and are a menace to common safety, are by
that very fact deprived of human rights and dignity, and that
with regard to them all things are lawful.

This point of view, however, came to be changed. The
development of ethical thought first among the Sophists and in
Socrates, then among the Greco-Roman Stoics, the work of Roman
lawyers and the very character of the Roman Empire, which
embraced many peoples and nations, and therefore inevitably
widened the theoretical and practical outlook, — all this has
gradually effaced the old limits and established a consciousness of
the moral principle in its formal universality and infinity. At the
same time, in the East the religiously moral teaching of the Jewish
prophets was evolving a living ideal of absolute human dignity.
And while a Roman in the theatre of the eternal city proclaimed,
by the mouth of the actor, the new word ' homo sum1 as the
expression of the highest personal dignity, instead of the old
1 civis RomanusJ another Roman in a remote Eastern province
and at a scene more tragic completed the statement of this new
principle by simply pointing to the actual personal incarnation of
it : Ecce homo!

The inner change which took place in humanity as the result
of the interaction of the events in Palestine and the Greco-
Roman theories ought, it would seem, to have been the beginning
of an entirely new order of things. Indeed, a complete regenera
tion of the physical world was expected ; and yet the social and
moral world of heathendom still stands essentially unchanged.
This will not be an object for grief and wonder if the problem of
the moral regeneration of humanity is considered in its full
scope. It is clear from the nature of the case, and is foretold in
the Gospels,1 that this problem can only be solved by a gradual
process before the final catastrophe comes. The process of such
preparation is not yet completed, but is being carried on, and

1 In the parables of the leaven, of wheat and tares, of the mustard seed, etc.

272 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

there is no doubt that from the fifteenth and especially from
the end of the eighteenth century there has been a noticeable
change in the rate of the historical progress. It is important
from the practically moral point of view to make clear to ourselves
what has been done already and what still remains to be done in
certain definite directions.

IV

When men of different nationality and social position wore
spiritually united in worshipping a foreigner and a beggar — the
Galilean who was executed as a criminal in the name of national
and class interests — international wars, rightlessness of the masses,
and executions of criminals were inwardly undermined. Granted
that the inner change took eighteen centuries to manifest itself
even to a small extent ; granted that its manifestation is becoming
noticeable just at the time when its first mover — the Christian
faith — is weakened, and seems to disappear from the surface of
consciousness — still, man's inner attitude towards the old heathen
foundations of society is changing, and the change shows itself
more and more in his life. Whatever the thoughts of individual
men may be, advanced humanity as a collective whole has
reached a degree of moral maturity, a state of feeling and
consciousness, which is beginning to make impossible for it things
which to the ancient world were natural. And even individual
men, if they have not renounced reason altogether, hold, in the
form of rational conviction if not in the form of religious faith,
the moral principle which does not permit the legalisation of
collective crimes. The very fact of the remotest parts of
humanity coming into contact, of getting to know one another
and becoming mutually connected, does much to abolish the
barriers and estrangement between men, natural from the narrow
point of view of the ancients, for whom the Straits of Gibraltar
were the extreme limit of the universe, and the banks of the
Dnieper or the Don were populated by men with dogs' heads.

International wars are not yet abolished, but the point of view
with regard to them has changed in a striking degree, especially
of late. The fear of war has become the predominant motive of
international policy, and no Government would venture to confess

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 273

to harbouring plans of conquest. Slavery in the proper sense has
been finally and wholly abolished. Other crude forms of personal
dependence which survived till the last century, and, in places, till
the middle of the present, have also been done away with. What
remains is only the indirect economic slavery, but this too is a
question whose turn has come. Finally, the point of view with
regard to criminals has since the eighteenth century been clearly
tending to become more moral and Christian. And to think
that this progress — belated, but quick and decisive — along the
path mapped out nineteen centuries ago, should cause anxiety
for the moral foundations of society ! In truth, a false conception
of these foundations is the chief obstacle to a thorough moral
change in the social life and consciousness. Religion, family,
property cannot as such, that is, simply as existent facts, be the
norm or the moral foundation of society. The problem is not
to preserve these institutions at any cost in statu quo but to
make them conformable to the one and only moral standard, so
that they might be wholly permeated by the one moral principle.
This principle is essentially universal, the same for all.
Now, religion as such need not be universal, and all religions
of antiquity were strictly national. Christianity, however, being
the embodiment of the absolute moral ideal, is as universal as
the moral principle itself, and at the beginning it had this
character. But historical institutions, which in the course of
history came to be connected with it, ceased to be universal
and therefore lost their pure and all-embracing moral character-
And so long as we affirm our religion, first^ in its denominational
peculiarity, and then only as universal Christianity, we deprive it
both of a sound logical basis and of moral significance, and make
it an obstacle in the way of the spiritual regeneration of humanity.
Further, universality expresses itself not only by the absence of
external, national, denominational and other limitations, but still
more by freedom from inner limitations. To be truly universal,
religion must not separate itself from intellectual enlightenment,
from science, from social and political progress. A religion
which fears all these things has obviously no faith in its own
power and is inwardly permeated with unbelief. While claiming
to be the sole moral norm of society, it fails to fulfil the most
elementary moral condition of being genuine.

T

274 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

The positive significance of the family^ in virtue of which it
may, in a sense, be the moral norm of society, is apparent from
the following consideration. It is physically impossible for a
single individual concretely to realise in his everyday life his moral
relation to all. However sincerely a man may recognise the
absolute demands of the moral ideal, he cannot, in real life,
apply these demands to all human beings, for the simple reason
that the 'all' do not concretely exist for him. He cannot
give practical proof of his respect for the human dignity of the
millions of men about whom he knows nothing ; he cannot
make them in concreto the positive end of his activity. And
yet, unless the moral demand is completely realised in perceptible
personal relations, it remains an abstract principle which
enlightens the mind, but does not regenerate the life of man.
The solution of this contradiction is that moral relations ought
to be fully realised within a certain limited environment in
which each man is placed in his concrete everyday existence.
This is precisely the true function of the family. Each member
of it is not only intended and meant to be, but actually is, an
end for all the others ; each is perceptibly recognised to have
absolute significance, each is irreplaceable. From this point of
view the family is the pattern and the elementary constitutive cell
of universal brotherhood or of human society as it ought to be.
But in order to preserve such a significance, the family obviously
must not become the embodiment of mutual egoism. It must
be the first stage from which each of its members may be always
able to ascend, as much as in him lies, to a greater realisation of
the moral principle in the world. The family is either the crown-
Ing stage of egoism or the beginning of world-wide union. To
uphold it in the first sense does not mean to uphold a ' moral
foundation ' of society.

Property as such has no moral significance. No one is
morally bound either to be rich or to enrich other people.
General equality of property is as impossible and unnecessary
as sameness in the colouring or in the quantity of hair. There
is one condition, however, which renders the question as to
the distribution of property a moral question. It is inconsistent
with human dignity and with the moral norm of society that
a person should be unable to support his existence, or, that in

THE MORAL NORM OF SOCIAL LIFE 275

order to do so he should spend so much time and strength as
to have none left for looking after his human, intellectual and,
moral improvement. In that case man ceases to be an end for
himself and for others, and becomes merely a material instrument
of economic production, on a level with soulless machines.
And since the moral principle unconditionally demands that we
should respect the human dignity of all and each, and regard
every one as an end in himself and not only as a means, a society
that desires to be morally normal cannot remain indifferent to
such a position of any one of its members. It is its direct duty
to secure to each and all a certain minimum of well-being, just
as much as is necessary to support a worthy human existence.
The way to attain this is a problem for economics and not
for ethics. In any case it ought to be, and therefore it can
be, done.

All human society, and especially society that professes to
be Christian, must, if it is to go on existing and to attain to a
higher dignity, conform to the moral standard. What matters is
not the external preservation of certain institutions, which may
be good or bad, but a sincere and consistent striving inwardly to
improve all institutions and social relations which may be good,
by subordinating them more and more to the one unconditional
moral ideal of the^r^ union of all in the perfect good.

Christianity put forward this ideal as a practical task for
all peoples and nations, answered for its being realisable — given
a good will on our part — and promised help from above in the
execution of it — help, of which there is sufficient evidence both
in personal and in historical experience. But just because
the task Christianity sets before us is a moral and therefore a
free one, the supreme Good cannot help man by thwarting the
evil will or externally removing the obstacles which that will
puts in the way of the realisation of the kingdom of God.
Humanity as represented by individuals and nations must itself
outlive and overcome these obstacles, which are to be found both
in the individual evil will and in the complex effects of the
collective evil will. This is the reason why progress in the
Christian world is so slow, and why Christianity appears to be
lifeless and inactive.

CHAPTER V

THE NATIONAL QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW

THE work of embodying perfect morality in the collective
whole of mankind is hindered, in addition to individual passions
and vices, by the inveterate forms of collective evil which act
like a contagion. In spite of the slow but sure progress in the
life of humanity, that evil shows itself now, as it did of old, in
a threefold hostility, a threefold immoral relation — between
different nations, between society and the criminal, between
the different classes of society. Listen to the way in which the
French speak of the Germans, the Portuguese of the Dutch,
the Chinese of the English, and Americans of the Chinese.
Consider the thoughts and feelings of the audience at a criminal
trial, the behaviour of a crowd using lynch law in America,
or settling accounts with a witch or a horse-stealer in Russia.
Hear or read the remarks exchanged between socialist workmen
and representatives of the propertied classes at meetings, and in
the newspapers. It will then become evident that apart from
the anomalies of the personal will we must also take into account
the power of the superpersonal or collective hostility in its three
aspects. The national, the penal and the socially economic
questions have, independently of all considerations of internal and
external policy, a special interest for the moral consciousness.
To deal with them from this point of view is all the more
essential, because a new and worse evil has been added of late to
the calamity of the hereditary disease — namely, the rash attempt
to cure it by preaching new forms of social violence on the one
hand, and a passive disintegration of humanity into its individual
units on the other.

276

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 277

I

Man's relation to nationality is in our day generally determined
in two ways : as nationalistic or as cosmopolitan. There may be
many shades and transition stages in the domain of feeling and of
taste, but there are only two clear and definite points of view.
The first may be formulated as follows : We must love our own
nation and serve it by all the means at our command^ and to other
nations we may be indifferent. If their interests conflict with ours,
we must take up a hostile attitude to the foreign nations. The essence
of the cosmopolitan view is this : Nationality is merely a natural
fact^ devoid of all moral significance ; we have no duties to the nation
as such (neither to our own nor to any other] ; our duty is only to
individual men without any distinction of nationality.

It is at once apparent that neither view expresses the right
attitude towards the fact of national difference. The first ascribes
to this fact an absolute significance which it cannot possess, and
the second deprives it of all significance. It will be easily seen
also that each view finds its justification solely in the negative
aspect of the opposite view.

No rational believer in cosmopolitanism would, of course, find
fault with the adherents of nationalism for loving their own
country. He would only blame them for thinking that it is
permissible, and in some cases even obligatory, to hate and despise
men of a different race and nationality. In the same way the
most ardent nationalist will not, unless he is altogether devoid of
reason, attack the champions of cosmopolitanism for demanding
justice for other nations, but will accuse them of being indifferent
to their own. So that in each of these views even its direct
opponents cannot help distinguishing the good side from the bad,
and the question naturally arises whether these two sides are
necessarily connected. Does love for one's own people necessarily
imply the view that all means of serving it are permissible, and
justify an indifferent and hostile relation to other nations ? Does
the same moral relation to all human beings necessarily mean
indifference to nationality in general, and to one's own in
particular ?

The first question is easily solved by analysing the content of

278 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the idea of true patriotism or love for one's country. The
necessity for such an elementary analysis will be recognised by
every one. For every one will agree that patriotism may be
irrational^ do harm instead of the intended good, and lead nations
to disaster ; that patriotism may be vain, and based on unfounded
pretensions ; and, finally, that it may be directly fa/se, and serve
merely as a cloak for low and selfish motives. In what, then,
does true or real patriotism consist ?

When we really love some one, we wish and strive to obtain
for them both moral and material good, — the latter, however,
only on condition of the former. To every one whom I love
I wish, among other things, material prosperity, provided, of
course, that it is attained by honourable means and made good
use of. But if, when my friend is in need, I were to assist him
in making his fortune by fraud, even supposing that he would
be certain to escape punishment — or, if he were a writer, and I
advised him to increase his literary fame by a successful plagiarism,
I should be rightly considered by every one to be either a madman
or a scoundrel, and certainly not a good friend.

It is clear then that the goods which love leads us to desire for
our neighbours differ both in their external character and in their
inner meaning for the will. Spiritual goods exclude, by the very
conception of them, the possibility of being attained by bad
means j one cannot steal moral dignity, or plunder justice, or
appropriate benevolence. These goods are unconditionally desirable.
Material goods, which, from the nature of the case, admit of bad
means, are on the contrary desirable on condition that such means
are not used, i.e. on condition that material ends are subordinate
to the moral end.

Up to a certain point every one will agree with this element
ary truth. Every one would grant that it is wrong to enrich
oneself at the cost of a crime, or to enrich a friend, one's own or
his family, or even one's town or province at the cost of a crime.
But this elementary moral truth which is as clear as day suddenly
becomes dim and altogether obscure as soon as we get to one's
country. Everything becomes permissible in the service of its
supposed interests, the purpose justifies the means, the black
becomes white, falsehood is preferred to truth, violence is extolled
as a virtue. Nationality here becomes the final end, the highest

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 279

good and the standard of good for human activity. Such undue
glorification is, however, purely illusory, and is in truth degrading
to the nation. The highest human goods cannot, as we have
seen, be attained by immoral means. By admitting bad means
into our service of the nation and by justifying them we limit the
national interest to the lower material goods which may be
obtained and preserved by wrong and evil methods. This is a
direct injury to the very nation we wish to serve. It means
transferring the centre of gravity of the national life from the
higher sphere to the lower, and serving national egoism undei
the guise of serving the nation. The moral worthlessness of such
nationalism is proved by history itself. There is abundant
evidence that nations prospered and were great only so long as
they did not make themselves their final end, but served the
higher, the universal ideal ends. History shows also that the
very conception of the nation as a final and ultimate bearer of
the collective life of humanity is ill-founded.

II

The division of humanity into definite and stable groups
possessing a national character is a fact which is neither universal
nor first in the order of time. Not to speak of savages and
barbarians, who are still living in separate families, clans or
nomadic bands, division into nations did not exclusively pre
dominate even in the civilised part of humanity when the tribe
was finally superseded by the £ city ' or * country.' The country
and the nation, though more or less closely associated, do not alto
gether coincide. In the ancient world we find hardly any clear
division into nations at all. We find either independent civic com
munities, i.e. groups smaller than the nation and united politically
only and not by the bond of nationality — such as the cities of
Phoenicia, Greece and Italy — or, on the contrary, groups larger
than the nation — the so-called c world empires ' which included
many peoples, from the Assyro-Babylonic down to the Roman.
In these crude precursors of the universal unity of mankind
national considerations had merely a material significance and
were not the determining factor. The idea of nationality
as the supreme principle of life found neither the time nor

280 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the place for its application in the ancient world. The
opposition between one's own people and aliens was then
far more sharp and ruthless than it is now, but it was
not determined by nationality. In the kingdom of Darius and
Xerxes men of different race and nationality were all regarded as
members of one body, since they were equally subject to one
common authority and one supreme law. Enemies or aliens were
the men who were not yet brought under the rule of ' the great
king.' On the other hand, in Greece, the fact that Spartans and
Athenians spoke the same language, had the same gods and realised
that they belonged to the same nation, did not prevent them from
treating each other as foreigners throughout their history, or even
from being mortal enemies. Similar relations held between other
cities or civic communities of Greece, and only once in a thousand
years did the true national or pan-Greek patriotism actively show
itself, namely, during the Persian war. The coincidence — and that
only an approximate one — between practical solidarity and national
character hardly lasted for forty years, and was superseded by a
fierce and prolonged slaughter of the Greeks by the Greeks during
the Peloponnesian war. This state of deadly struggle between
small communities belonging to one and the same nation was con
sidered perfectly normal and continued up to the moment when
all these communities together lost their independence. They
lost it not in order to form a national unity, but in order that the
Greek nation might, under the power of foreign kings, immediately
pass from its state of political disruption to becoming the uniting
and civilising element in the whole of the ancient world. The
opposition between fellow-citizens and aliens (i.e. inhabitants of
another city, though a Greek one) had now lost its meaning as a
supreme political principle, and was not replaced by the opposition
between their own and other nations. What remained was the
wider opposition between Hellenism and barbarism, meaning by
the former participation in the higher intellectual and aesthetic
culture, and not necessarily the fact of being a Greek by birth, or of
using the Greek language. Not even the most arrogant of Greeks
ever regarded Horaceand Vergil, Augustusor Maecenas as barbarians.
Indeed the founders of the Hellenic ' world empire ' themselves —
the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander, were not Greeks
in the ethnographical sense. And it was owing to these two

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 281

foreigners that Greeks immediately passed from the narrow local
patriotism of separate civic communities to the consciousness of
themselves as bearers of a world-wide culture, without ever return
ing to the stage of the national patriotism of the Persian wars.
As to Rome, the whole of Roman history was a continuous
transition from the policy of a city to the policy of a world
Empire — ab urbe ad orbem — without pausing at a purely national
stage. When Rome was defending herself against the Punic
invasion, she was merely the most powerful of the Italian cities.
When she crushed her enemy, she imperceptibly overstepped the
ethnographical and the geographical boundaries of Latinism and
became conscious of herself as a moving force in the world-history,
anticipating by two centuries the poet's reminder —

But, Rome, 'tis thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind and make the world obey,
Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way,
To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free.

Roman citizenship soon became accessible to all, and the formula
1 Rome for the Romans ' appealed to no one on the banks of the
Tiber : Rome was for the world.

While Alexanders and Caesars were politically abolishing in
East and West the vague limits of nationality, cosmopolitanism as
a philosophical doctrine was developed and disseminated by the
representatives of the two most popular schools of thought — the
wandering Cynics and the dispassionate Stoics. They preached
the supremacy of nature and reason, the unity underlying all
existence and the insignificance of all artificial and historical
limitations and divisions. They taught that man by his very
nature and therefore every man had a supreme destination and
dignity, consisting in freedom from external affections, errors and
passions, in the steadfast courage of the man who " if the whole
world were dashed to fragments, would remain serene among the
ruins. " 1 Hence they inevitably recognised all the externally given
determinations, social, national, etc., as conventional and illusory.
Roman jurisprudence,2 in its own sphere and from its own point

1 Si fractus illabatur orbis

Impavidum ferient ruinae.

2 For confirmation of these statements see last chapter of Part I. of Natsionalny
Fopros (The national question}, by the present author.

282 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

of view, also supported the philosophical ideas of natural and
therefore universal reason, of virtue which is the same for all, and
of the equality of human rights. As a result of this collective
intellectual work the conception c Roman ' became identical
with the conception of c universal,' both in its external range of
application and in its inner content.1

Ill

At the beginning of the Christian era the Jewish people were
the only one within the civilised world of antiquity who had a
strong national consciousness. But in their case it was intimately
associated with their religion, with the true feeling of its inner
superiority and a presentiment of world-wide historical destiny.
The national consciousness of the Jews had no real satis
faction ; it lived by hopes and expectations. The short-lived
greatness of David and Solomon was idealised and transformed
into a golden age. But the vital historical instinct of the people
who were the first to evolve a philosophy of history (in the book
of Daniel on the world empires and on the kingdom of truth of
the Son of man) did not allow them to stop at the glorified image
of the past and made them transfer their ideal into the future. This
ideal, however, had from the first certain features of universal
significance, and when, by the inspiration of the prophets, it was
transferred to the future it became finally free from all narrow
nationalistic limitations. Isaiah proclaimed the Christ as the
banner that is to gather all natio'ns round Himself, and the author
of the book of Daniel entirely adopted the point of view of universal
history.

This universalistic conception of the Messiah, expressing the
true national self-consciousness of the Jews as the finest ideal
flower of the spirit of the people, was held only by the elect few.
When the banner for all the peoples was, as foretold by the
prophets, raised in Jerusalem and Galilee, the majority of the Jews
with their official leaders (the Sadducees), and partly with their
unofficial teachers (the Pharisees), proved to be on the side of the

1 Although the Stoic philosophy originated in Greece, independently of Rome, it
developed only in. the Roman era, was particularly prevalent among the Romans, and
manifested its practical influence chiefly through Roman lawyers.

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 283

national and religious exclusiveness as against the highest realisation
of the prophetic ideal. The inevitable conflict and breach between
these two tendencies — these l two souls,' l as it were — of the
Jewish people sufficiently explains (from the purely historical point
of view) the great tragedy of Golgotha, with which Christianity
began.2

It would, however, be an obvious mistake to associate
Christianity with the principle of cosmopolitanism. There was
no occasion for the Apostles to preach against nationality. The
dangerous and immoral aspect of national divisions, namely, mutual
hatred and malignant struggle, no longer existed within the limits
of the c universe ' 3 of that day ; Roman peace — pax Romana — had
abolished wars between nations. Christfan universalism was
directed against other and more profound divisions, which remained
in full force in practical life in spite of the ideas of the prophets,
the philosophers, and the jurists. There remained the distinction
of religion between Judaism and paganism, the distinction of
culture between Hellenism (which included educated Romans)
and barbarism, and, finally, the worst distinction — the socially-
economic one — between freemen and slaves. It had retained all
its force in practice, in spite of the theoretical protests of the Stoics.
These divisions were in direct opposition to the moral principle —
which was not the case with the national distinctions of that time.
The latter had in the Roman Empire as innocent a character as,
for instance, the provincialism of Gascogne or Brittany has in
modern France. But the opposition between the Jews and the
Gentiles, the Hellenes and the barbarians, freemen and slaves,
involved the denial of all solidarity between them ; it was an opposi
tion of the higher beings to the lower, the lower having their moral
dignity and human rights denied to them.4 This is the reason why
St. Paul had to proclaim that in Jesus Christ there is neither Jew

1 Two souls live in my breast,

They struggle, and long to be parted.

GOETHE.

2 That the best among the Pharisees took no part in the persecution of Jesus Christ,
and were favourable to primitive Christianity, is shown in Professor Hvolson's excellent
article in the Memuari Akademii Nauk (Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences], 1893.

3 OlKOfdv-r} (i.e. 777), the Greek name for the Roman Empire.

4 In speaking of the opposition between Judaism and paganism, I am referring, of
course, not to the teaching of Moses and the prophets and sages — they all recognised in
principle that the pagans had human rights — but to the spirit of the crowd and its leaders

284 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

nor Greek, neither bond nor free, but a new creation — a new creation,
however, and not simple reduction of the old to one denominator.
In the place of the negative ideal of the dispassionate Stoic un
moved by the downfall of the world, the Apostle puts the positive
ideal of a man full of compassion and at one with all that lives,
who shares in the sufferings of the universal man, Christ, and in
His death that redeems the world, and therefore participates in
His triumph over death and in the salvation of the whole world.
In Christianity the mind passes from the abstract man in general
of the philosophers and jurists to the concrete universal man.
The old hostility and estrangement between different sections of
humanity is thereby completely abolished. Every man, if only
he lets ' Christ be formed in him,' 1 i.e. if he enters into the spirit
of the perfect man, and determines all his life and activity by the
ideal revealed in the image of Christ, participates in the Godhead
through the power of the Son of God abiding in him. For the
regenerated man individuality, like all other characteristics and
distinctions, including that of nationality, ceases to be a limit ^ and
becomes the basis of positive union with the collective all-
embracing humanity or Church (in its true nature), which is
complementary to him. According to the well-known saying
of St. Paul the peculiarities of structure and of function which
distinguish a given bodily organ from other organs do not separate
it from them and from the rest of the body, but on the contrary
are the basis of its definite positive participation in the life of the
organism, and make it of unique value to all the other organs
and the body as a whole. Likewise in the c body of Christ ' in
dividual peculiarities do not separate one 'person from others, but
unite each with all, being the ground of his special significance
for all and of his positive interaction with them. Now this ob
viously applies to nationality as well. The all-embracing humanity
(or the Church which the Apostle preached) is not an abstract idea,
but is a harmonious union of all the concrete positive characteristics
of the new or the regenerated creation. It therefore includes the
national as well as the personal characteristics. The body of
Christ is a perfect organism and cannot consist of simple cells
alone ; it must contain larger and more complex organs, which
in this connection are naturally represented by the different nations.

1 St. Paul's expression.

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 285

The difference between the personal and the national character
is not one of principle l but of greater stability and wider range in
the case of the latter. Since Christianity does not demand absence
of individual character, it cannot demand absence of national char
acter. The spiritual regeneration it demands both of individuals
and of nations does not mean a loss of the natural qualities and
powers ; it means that these qualities are transformed, that a new
direction and a new content are given them. When Peter and John
were regenerated by the spirit of Christ, they did not lose any of
their positive peculiarities and distinct characteristic features. So
far from losing their individuality, they developed and strengthened
it. This is how it must be with entire nations converted to
Christianity.

Actual adoption of the true religion containing the uncondi
tional principle of morality must sweep away a great deal from the
national as well as from the individual life. But that which is in
compatible with the unconditional principle and has therefore to be
destroyed does not constitute a positive characteristic or peculiarity.
There is such a thing as collective evil will, as historical sin
burdening the national conscience, as a wrong direction of the life
and activity of a nation. From all these wrongs a nation must set
itself free, but such freedom can only strengthen it, and increase
and widen the expression of its positive character.

The first preachers of the Gospel had no reason to occupy
themselves with the national question which the life of humanity
had not yet brought to the fore, since there were hardly any
distinct, independent nations conscious of themselves as such on
the historical arena of the time. Nevertheless we find in the New

1 This is brought out by the fact that the only rational way of accounting for the
genesis of a stable national character, such as the Jewish — which is not affected by the
external influences of climate, history, etc., is to suppose that it is the inherited, personal
character of the national ancestor. The inner truth of the Biblical characteristic of
Jacob — the ancestor of the Jews — and also of Ishmail, the ancestor of the Northern
Arabs, will be recognised by any impartial reader, whatever his attitude to the historical
side of the narrative may be. Even granting that the man named Jacob, who did all
that in the book of Genesis he is said to have done, never existed at all, anyway the
Jews, or at any rate the chief tribe of Judah, must have had a common progenitor ; and
starting with the national character of the Jews we must conclude that that progenitor
had precisely the typical peculiarities which the Bible ascribes to Jacob. See S. M.
Solovyov's Nabludeniya nad istoricheskoiu •zh'mnyu narodo-v (Observations on the historical
life of nations'), and also my Filosofia Bibleiskoi Istorii (The Philosophy of the Biblical
History) in the Istoria Teokratii (History of Theocracy).

286 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Testament definite indications of a positive attitude to nationality.
The words spoken to the Samaritan woman, "salvation is of the
Jews" x and the preliminary direction to the disciples, " go rather
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," 2 clearly show Christ's
love for His own people. And His final command to the Apostles,
" Go ye therefore, and teach all nations" 3 implies that even out
side Israel He contemplated not separate individuals only, but
entire peoples.4 When St. Paul became the Apostle of the Gentiles
he did not thereupon become a cosmopolitan. Though separated
from the majority of his compatriots in the all-important question
of religion, he was not indifferent to his people and their special
destination :

" I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing
me witness in the Holy Ghost, that I have great heaviness and
continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself
were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according
to the flesh : who are Israelites ; to whom pertaineth the adoption,
and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and
the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of
whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came. . . . Brethren, my
heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be
saved." 5

IV

Before they could realise the ideal of universal humanity,
nations had first to be formed as distinct independent bodies.
Let us consider this process with special reference to Western
Europe, where it is finally completed. The Apostles' successors, to
whom the command to teach all nations was handed down, soon
came to deal with nations in their infancy, standing in need of
elementary upbringing before they could be taught. The Church
nurtured them conscientiously and with self-sacrificing devotion,

1 St. John iv. 22. 2 St. Matthew x. 6. 3 St. Matthew xxviii. 19.

4 The words in the Acts of the Apostles (i. 8), " Ye shall be witnesses unto me both
in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the
earth," show still more clearly that the Saviour of the world recognised a definite, local
and national starting-point for His world-wide work.

5 Romans ix. 1-5, x. i.

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 287

and then continued to act as their guardian, making them pass
through a school that was somewhat one-sided though not bad.
The historical childhood and youth of the Romano-Germanic
nations under the guardianship of the Roman Catholic Church —
the so-called Middle Ages — did not end in anything like a normal
way. The spiritual authorities failed to observe that their
nurslings had come of age, and, from natural human weakness,
insisted on treating them in the same old way. The anomalies
and changes that arose from this fact have no bearing on our
subject. What is of importance to us is the phenomenon which
took place in the development of every European nation. It un
doubtedly indicates a certain general ethico-historical law, for it
was manifested under the most various and often directly opposed
conditions.

For reasons sufficiently obvious Italy was the first of European
countries to attain to national self-consciousness. The Lombard
League in the middle of the twelfth century clearly indicates
national awakening. The external struggle, however, was only an
impetus that called to life the true forces of the Italian genius. At
the beginning of the next century the newly-born Italian language
was used by St. Francis to express ideas and feelings of universal
significance that could be understood by Buddhists and Christians
alike. At the same period began Italian painting (Cimabue),
and at the beginning of the fourteenth century appeared Dante's
comprehensive poem, which would alone have been sufficient
to make Italy great. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth
centuries Italy, torn asunder by the hostilities between the cities
and the podestas, the Pope and the Emperor, the French and
the Spanish, produced all for which humanity loves and values
her, all, of which Italians may justly pride themselves. All these
immortal works of the philosophical and scientific, poetical and
artistic genius had the same value for other nations, for the world
as a whole as for the Italians themselves. Men to whom Italy's
true greatness was due were no doubt real patriots. They set
the greatest value upon their country, but it was not in their case
an empty claim leading to false and immoral demands — they em
bodied the lofty significance of Italy in works of absolute value.
They did not consider it true and beautiful to affirm themselves
and their nationality, but they directly affirmed themselves in

288 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

what is true and beautiful. Their works were good not because
they glorified Italy, but rather they glorified Italy because they
were good in themselves — good for all. Under such conditions
patriotism stands in no need of defence and justification. It
justifies itself in practice, evincing itself as creative power and
not as fruitless reflection or c excitement of idle thought.' Cor
responding to the inner intensity of the creative work at this
blossoming time of Italy was the wide extension of the Italian
race at that period. Its civilising influence extended to the
Crimea in the East and Scotland in the North-West. The first
European to penetrate to Mongolia and China was Marco Polo, an
Italian. Another Italian discovered the new world, and the third,
enlarging that discovery, left it his name. The literary influence
of Italy was for several centuries prevalent throughout Europe.
Italian poetry, epic and lyric, and the Italian novel were examples
for imitation. Shakespeare took from the Italians the subjects
and the form of his plays. The ideas of Giordano Bruno roused
philosophical reflection both in England and in Germany. The
Italian language and Italian fashions universally prevailed in the
higher classes of society. And while the national creative work and
influence were at their highest, Italians were obviously concerned
not with keeping Italy for themselves— at that time indeed it
was for any one who liked to take it — but only with things which
made them be something for others and gave them a universal
significance. They cared for the objective ideas of beauty and
truth, which through their national spirit received a new and
worthy expression. What conception of nationality can be
logically deduced from this ? It cannot be said, with Italy's
national history before us, that nationality is something self-
existent and self-contained, living in itself and for itself, for this
great nation proves to be simply a special form of universal
content, living in that content, filled with it and embodying it
not for itself only but for all.

The Spanish nation developed under very peculiar conditions.
For seven centuries Spain was the vanguard on the right flank of
the Christian world in its struggle with Mohammedanism. And
just when the left flank — Byzantium — was overthrown by the
enemy, on the right flank Spaniards won a final and decisive
victory. This long and successful struggle was justly regarded as

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 289

the national glory of Spain. It is not permissible for a Christian
people to hate and despise Mohammedans — or any one else — or
seek to exterminate them ; but to defend Europe against invasion
by them was a direct Christian duty. For in so far as Christianity,
in spite of all its historical perversions, contains absolute truth, to
which the future belongs, in so far the defence even of the external
boundaries of Christian faith and culture against the destructive
violence of the armed hordes of unbelievers is an unquestionable
merit from the point of view of humanity. Apart from the
question of religious belief, would it have been a gain for historical
progress had Western Europe met with the fate of Western
Asia or of the Balkan Peninsula ? l In defending themselves
against the Moors the Spaniards were serving the common cause
of humanity, and they knew it. They would not dream of
saying 'Spain is for the Spaniards,' for in that case why should
they not go further and say c Castile is for the Castilians,
Arragon is for the Arragonians,' etc. ? They felt, they thought,
and they proclaimed that Spain was for all Christendom, as
Christianity was for all the world. Their feeling was perfectly
genuine, they really wished to serve their religion as a universal
religion, as the highest good for all, and one can only reproach
them with having a wrong or a one - sided conception of
Christianity. The continuous struggle for a common and
just cause lasted for seven centuries, and, being chiefly an
external struggle waged by the force of arms,2 it created both

1 At one time the Moorish culture in Spain was not inferior, and in some respects
it was superior to the Christian culture of the period. But history clearly proves how
short-lived all Mohammedan culture is. The end with which it met in the Middle
Ages in Damascus, Bagdad and Cairo would no doubt have been repeated once
more in the West. There too it would have been replaced by stable barbarism, such
as the Turkish. And if the Bashi-Bazouks were to overrun London, and Saxony were
to be constantly raided by the Kurds, what would become of the British Museum and the
Leipzig Press? This is an argument ad homines. But speaking quite seriously and
wholly admitting the comparative merits of Mohammedanism and the historical tasks
it still has to accomplish in Asia and Africa, it must be remembered that this religion
professedly renounces the absolute moral ideal, i.e. the principle of the perfect mani
festation of God in man, and has no right therefore to dominate Christian peoples. To
repulse the Mohammedan invasion of Europe was therefore both a historical necessity
and a historical merit for the Christian nations which took a leading part in the
struggle.

2 Chiefly, but not exclusively, for Spain too had some truly spiritual champions of
Christianity. Such, e.g., was Raymond Lullius, who devoted his life to spreading the

U

290 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the strength and the narrowness of the national spirit of Spain.
More than any other nation the Spaniards distorted the truth
of Christianity in their practical conception of it and in their
actions ; more decisively than any one they associated it with
violence. According to the general custom of the Middle
Ages, the Spaniards based their practical view of the world
upon the distinction between the two swords — the spiritual
sword of the monks under the rule of the Pope, and the worldly
sword of the knights under the rule of the king. But in their
case — more than in the case of any other nation — the two
swords were so closely connected as to become essentially alike.
The spiritual sword proved in the end to be as material and
violent as the worldly, though more painful and less noble than
the latter. The special part played by the Spanish nation
in this respect is shown by the fact that the Inquisition had
twice been started by Spaniards — by the monk Dominique in
the thirteenth, and the king Ferdinand in the fifteenth century.1

The struggle of Spanish knights with the bellicose Moham
medan invaders was a gain to Christianity and the source of the
greatness of Spain. The work of the ' spiritual sword ' against
the conquered Moors and defenceless Jews was treason to the
spirit of Christ, a disgrace to Spain and the first cause of its
downfall. The bitter fruits of the fatal historical sin did not
ripen at once. In following its old path of external service
to the Christian faith Spain did one good thing more for the
common cause — namely, she spread Christianity beyond the

true religion by means of rational persuasion. He worked out a special method,
which he thought could render the dogmas of the faith as self-evident as the truths of
pure mathematics and formal logic. Later on he became a missionary, and was
assassinated in the Bastarian Colonies for peaceful preaching of the Gospel.

1 It is a curious coincidence that in both the East and the West the first persecution
for religious beliefs — namely, the persecution of the Manichean heresy in the fourth
century — was due to a Spaniard — Theodosius the Great. It is curious too that the
heresy of the Albigenses, against which the Dominican inquisition was originally
intended, was a direct development of Manicheism, on account of which the Emperor
Theodosius had appointed his ' inquisitors ' ten centuries before. Shortly before that
time the deplorable part which the Spanish nation was to play with regard to religious
persecutions was foreshadowed by the fact that the first execution for religious belief
(viz. that of the Priscillian heretics) was due to the instigation of two Spanish bishops.
This unheard-of action called forth protests both in Italy (St. Ambrose of Milan) and
in France (St. Martin of Tours).

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 291

ocean. Spanish knights and pirates acquired for Christian
culture, such as it was, the greater part of the new world. They
saved a whole country (Mexico) from such abominations and
horrors of satanic heathendom l as cause even the horrors of the
Inquisition to fade (and the Inquisition itself was abolished
soon after). They founded in Southern and Central America
a dozen new States which take some part in the common
historical life of humanity. At the same time Spanish mission
aries — a real saint like the Jesuit Francis Xavier among them —
were the first to carry the Gospel to India and Japan. Spain,
however, still regarded as its main task the defence of Christianity
(as she understood it, i.e. of the Roman Church) from its im
mediate and most dangerous enemies. In the fifteenth century
it found such enemies no longer in the Mohammedans but
in the Protestants. At the present time we can look upon
the Reformation as a necessary moment in the history of
Christianity itself. But for people who lived at that epoch it
was impossible to take this view. They either themselves
became Protestants or regarded Protestantism as a hostile attack,
proceeding from the devil, against the Christian truth embodied
in the Church. For Spain, whose whole history was bound up
with the Catholic idea, there could be no choice. All the
strength of the most powerful country of the time was directed
to crushing the new religious movement. It was a work wrong
in principle, revoltingly cruel in practice, and a hopeless failure
in its result. The moral guilt of Spain, which made the Duke
of Alba her national and c Christian ' hero, is beyond all doubt.
One can only point to some extenuating circumstances. The
Spanish were sincerely, though blindly, convinced that they
were standing up for a good that is universal, for what is most
important and precious to humanity — the one true religion,
of which godless renegades, possessed by the spirit of evil, wanted
to rob mankind. In this national struggle against Protestantism
the Spanish defended a certain universal principle, namely, the
principle of the external guardianship of a divine institution over
humanity. It was a false and untenable universalism, but its
champions sincerely believed in it and served it disinterestedly

1 For an impartial statement of the facts see A. Reville's book on the religion of
Mexico and Peru.

292 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

without any selfish considerations, whether nationally-political or
personal. At the same time the Spanish genius of Ignatius
Loyola founded, with the purpose of combating Protestantism
by peaceful means, the order of Jesuits — an order of which
people may think what they like, but to which one thing can
certainly not be denied — viz. its universal and international
character. So that in making the struggle with Protestantism
into a national idea the Spanish did not separate it from the
interests of the common good, as they understood it. The
unsuccessful external struggle for Roman Catholicism under
mined the kingdom of Spain, but did not exhaust the spiritual
forces of the Spanish nation. Moral energy shown in the
defence of a universal though a wrongly conceived cause found
another and a better expression in the realm of the spirit. In
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Spain made considerable
national contributions to the general treasury of higher culture
in the domain of art, poetry, and contemplative mysticism. In
all these things the Spanish genius was occupied with objects
important not for the Spanish nation only but for all mankind.
Its work was extremely national in character, but this came
about naturally, without any deliberate intention on the part
of the authors. It undoubtedly had a universal interest, and
supported the glory of Spain at a time when her external power
was on the wane and her arms were justly suffering defeat. The
influence of Spanish culture rivalled that of the Italian in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, precisely at a time when
half Europe entertained a natural hostility towards the defenders
of the old religion.

The highest development of the English national spirit may,
for the sake of brevity, be designated by five names : Bacon,
Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, and Penn. These five names have
nothing to do with the demands and pretensions of exclusive
nationalism. They stand for what is of importance and value to
all mankind, and express the common debt of humanity to England.
The men who created the national greatness of England never
thought of nationalism as such. One was concerned with the
true knowledge of nature and of man, and was occupied with the
problem of a new and better scientific method ; another sought
artistically to represent the human soul, human passions, characters

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 293

and destinies, and did not hesitate to borrow his subjects from
foreign literature and transfer the place of action to foreign
countries. The great leaders of the Puritan movement, who found
their prophet in Milton, thought above all things of ordering life
in accordance with the Biblical ideal, equally binding, in their
view, upon all nations. These Englishmen did not hesitate to
recognise for their own and to carry beyond the ocean an ideal
Hebrew in its first origin and German in its Protestant form.
And the greatest representative of modern science discovered with
his English intellect a universal truth about the physical world as
an interconnected whole, containing, as a principle of its unity,
that which he called the 'sensorium of the Deity.'

A broadly conceived world of scientific experience, open on
all sides to the intellect ; profound artistic humanism ; high ideas
of religious and political freedom and a grand conception of the
physical unity of the universe — this is what the English nation
produced through her heroes and men of genius. i England for
the English ' was not enough for them ; they thought that the
whole world was for the English, and they had a right to think so,
because they themselves were for the whole world. The wide
diffusion of the English race was in close correlation with the
good qualities of the national character. British merchants,
of course, always observed their own interests ; but it is not
any merchants who could succeed in colonising North America
and forming a new great nation of it. For the United States
were built up, not by the Redskins or Negroes, but by English
people and English political and religious ideas — ideas of universal
significance. Nor is it any merchants who could take firm
possession of India and build a civilised Australia on a perfectly
virginal soil.1

The culminating point in the national history of France is the
epoch of the great Revolution and of the Napoleonic wars, when

1 Hindus taught in English schools begin to complain — in the English and their
own newspapers, after the English style — that the English yoke is burdensome
and to say that their nation must be united and obtain freedom for itself. Why
is it that this had never occurred to them before? The fact is that they obtained ideas,
such as that of nationality, national spirit, national dignity, patriotism, solidarity,
development, exclusively from the English. Left to themselves they had not been
able to arrive at them during the two and a half thousand years of their history, in spite
of their ancient wisdom.

294 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the universal significance of that country was most clearly apparent.
The national life was then at its highest, not perhaps from the
point of view of its content, but of its intensity and of the. breadth
of external influence. No doubt, the rights of man and of citizen
proclaimed to all the world proved to be largely fictitious ; no
doubt the all-embracing revolutionary trinity — liberte^ egalite^
fraternit^ — was realised in a very peculiar fashion. But in any
case the fact that the people were carried away by these universal
ideas showed that the spirit of narrow nationalism was foreign to
them. Did France want to be c for the French ' only when she
surrendered herself to a half-Italian in order that he should direct
her powers and sweep away in the whole of Europe the old order
of things, introducing everywhere the principles of civic equality,
religious and political freedom ? Apart from this epoch, indeed,
France was always noted for a special kind of universal receptivity
and communicativeness, by a power and a desire to grasp the ideas
of others, give them a finished and popular form, and then to send
them forth into the world. This power makes the history of
France a vivid and emphatic r/sume of universal history, and is
too obvious and too well known to dwell upon.

Having first shown the greatness of her national spirit in the
Reformation, Germany has in modern times (from the middle
of the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century)
occupied the foremost place in the domain of higher culture,
intellectual and aesthetic — the place which Italy had held at the
end of mediaeval and at the beginning of modern history. The
universal character and significance of the Reformation, of the
poetry of Goethe, of the philosophy of Kant or Hegel, stands
in no need of proof or demonstration. I will only observe that
for Germany, as for Italy, the period of the highest development
of the spiritual forces of the nation coincided with the period of
political weakness and disruption.

The broad idealism of the Polish spirit, receptive of foreign
influences to the point of enthusiasm and devotion, is only
too obvious. The universalism of the Poles caused the narrow
nationalists to reproach them of c treason to the cause of the
Slavs.' But those who are familiar with the shining lights of
Polish thought — Mickiewicz, Krasinski, Tovianski, Slowacki —
know how greatly the power of the national genius showed

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 295

itself in their universalistic work. As to our own country, the
Russian spirit has hitherto found no embodiment more vivid and
powerful than the Tsar, whose powerful arm has demolished our
national exclusiveness for ever, and the poet who had a special
gift to identify himself with the genius of other nations and yet
remain wholly Russian.1 Peter the Great and Pushkin — these
two names are sufficient to prove that the dignity of our national
spirit found its realisation only in unreserved communion with
the rest of humanity, and not apart from it.

Without enumerating all the other nations, I will only mention
Holland and Sweden. The national glory and prosperity of the
first were due to her struggle for the faith against Spanish
despotism. As a consequence of it, the little country did not shut
itself up in its dearly bought independence, but became the abode
of free thought for all Europe. Sweden manifested hei national
greatness when, under Gustavus Adolphus, she devoted herself to
the service of the common cause of religious freedom against the
policy of compulsory uniformity.

The history of all nations which have had a direct influence
upon the destinies of humanity in ancient and modern times
teaches one and the same thing. At the period when their powers
were unfolded to the utmost, they took the greatness and the
value of their nationality to lie not in itself taken in the abstract,
but in something universal, supernational that they believed in,
that they served and that they realised in their creative work — a
work national in its origin and means of expression, but wholly
universal in its content and in its objective result. Nations live
and act not for their own sakes, nor for the sake of their material
interests, but of their idea, i.e. for the sake of what is most
important to them and can be of service to the world as a whole—
they live not for themselves only, but for all. That which a nation
believes in and does in faith it is bound to regard as unconditionally
good — not as its own good, but as good in itself and therefoie as

1 The well-known remark of Dostoevsky, who at his best was himself equally all-
embracing.

296 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

good for all ; and such it generally proves to be. Historical
representatives of a nation may wrongly understand this or that
aspect of a nationally-universal idea which they serve, and then
their service is bad and fruitless. Philip II. and the Duke of
Alba had a very wrong idea of ecclesiastical unity, and the Paris
Convention understood the idea of human rights no better. But
the bad understanding passes away and the idea remains, and, if
it is really rooted in the soul of a people, it finds new and better
expression free from the old imperfections.

The creative work of a nation, i.e. that which a nation con
cretely realises in the world, is universal ; the object of true national
self-consciousness is universal also. A nation is not aware of itself
in the abstract, as of an empty subject separate from the content
and the meaning of its life. It is conscious of itself in relation to
that which it does and wants to do, in relation to what it believes
in and what it serves.

It is clear from history that a nation does not regard itself,
taken in the abstract, as the purpose of its life. In other words,
it does not set an absolute value upon its material interest apart
from its supreme ideal condition. But if this be so, the individual
too has no right in his love for his nation to separate it from the
meaning of its existence and to put the service of its material
advantages above the demands of morality. A nation in and
through its true creative work and self-consciousness affirms itself
in the universal — in that which is of value for every one and in
which all are united. How then can a true patriot, for the sake of
a supposed * advantage ' to his nation, destroy its solidarity with
other nations, and despise or hate foreigners ? A nation finds its
true good in the common good ; how then can a patriot take the
good of his nation to be something distinct from and opposed to
everything else ? It will clearly not be the ideal moral good
which the nation itself desires, and the supposed patriot will
prove to be opposed not to other nations but to his own in its best
aspirations. National hostility and opposition no doubt exist, just
as cannibalism once existed everywhere ; they exist as a zoological
fact, condemned by the best consciousness of the peoples themselves.
Made into an abstract principle this zoological fact hangs over
the life of nations, obscuring its significance and destroying
its inspiration — for the significance and the inspiration of the

THE NATIONAL QUESTION 297

particular is only to be found in its connection and harmony with the
universal.

As against false patriotism or nationalism, which supports the
predominance of the animal instincts of a people over its higher
national self-consciousness, cosmopolitanism is right in demanding
that the moral law shall be unconditionally applied to all, apart
from all difference of nationality. But it is the moral principle
itself which, when consistently worked out, prevents us from being
satisfied with the negative demand of cosmopolitanism.

Let it be granted that the immediate object of the moral
relation is the individual person. But one of the essential peculiari
ties of that person — direct continuation and expansion of his
individual character — is his nationality (in the positive sense of
character, type, and creative power). This is not merely a
physical, but also a psychical and moral fact. At the stage
of development now reached by humanity the fact of belong
ing to a given nationality is to a certain extent confirmed
by the individual's self-conscious will. Thus nationality is an
inner, inseparable property of the person — is something very dear
and close to him. It is impossible to stand in a moral relation
to this person without recognising the existence of what is so
important to him. The moral principle does not allow us to
transform a concrete person, a living man with his inseparable
and essential national characteristics into an empty abstract subject
with all his determining peculiarities left out. If we are to
recognise the inner dignity of this particular man this obligation
extends to all positive characteristics with which he connects his
dignity j if we love a man we must love his nation which he loves
and from which he does not separate himself. The highest moral
ideal demands that we should love all men as we love ourselves. But
since men do not exist outside of nations (just as nations do not
exist apart from individual men), and since this connection has
already become moral and inward as well as physical, the direct
logical deduction is that we must lw palliations as we love our own.
This commandment affirms patriotism as a natural and fundamental
feeling, as a direct duty of the individual to the collective whole
immediately above him, and at the same time it frees that feeling
from the zoological properties of national egoism or nationalism,
and makes it the basis of and the standard for a positive relation

298 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

to all other nations in accordance with the absolute and all-
embracing principle of morality. The significance of this demand
of loving other nations does not in any way depend upon the
metaphysical question as to whether nations are independent
collective entities. Even if a nation exists only in its visible indi
vidual representatives, at any rate in them it constitutes a positive
peculiarity which one may value and love in foreigners just as
much as in men belonging to our own people. If such a relation
actually becomes a rule, national differences will be preserved and
even intensified, while hostile divisions and aggressiveness, that are
so fundamental an obstacle to the moral organisation of humanity,
will disappear.

The demand to love other nations as our own does not at all
imply a psychological identity of feeling, but only an ethical identity
of conduct. I must desire the true good of all other nations
as much as that of my own. This 4 love of benevolence ' is
identical if only because the true good is one and indivisible. Such
ethical love involves, of course, a psychological understanding and
approval of the positive characteristics of other nations. Once the
senseless and ignorant national hostility has been overcome by
the moral will, we begin to know and to value other nations — we
begin to like them. This ' approving love,' however, can never
be identical with the love we feel for our own people, just as the
sincerest love to our neighbours (according to the commandment
of the Gospel) can never be psychologically identical with the love
for oneself, although it is ethically equivalent to it. One's own
self, just as one's own nation, always retains the priority of a starting-
point. When this difficulty is cleared away, no serious objections
can be raised against the principle: love all other nations as your own}-

1 I cannot regard as serious the objection made by one of my critics that it is
impossible to love one's own and other nations equally, because in war it is necessary to
fight for one's own people against the others. I would have thought it obvious that
the moral norm of international relations must be deduced from some other fact than that
of war. Otherwise we might be driven to take as the norm for personal relations such
facts as, e.g., a furious fight between an actor and a Government clerk, which recently
engaged the attention of the newspapers.

CHAPTER VI

THE PENAL QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW

HAVING accepted the unconditional principle of morality as the
standard of all human relations we shall find no real inner difficulty
in applying it to international morality, i.e. to the question as to
how we ought to regard foreigners as such ; neither the character
istics of this or that people nor the general fact of belonging to a
foreign nation contain any moral limitation in virtue of which we
might a priori regard a given foreigner as a worse man than any of our
compatriots. There is therefore no moral ground for national in
equality. The general demand of altruism — to love one's neighbour
as oneself and another nation as one's own — remains here in full
force. The fact of international hostility must be unconditionally
condemned as directly opposed to the absolute norm and as essen
tially anti-Christian.1 The normal or the right attitude to foreign
nations is directly demanded by the unconditional principle of
morality. Its application involves great practical difficulties, both
historical and psychological, but it does not give rise to any inner
moral difficulties, complications, or questions. Such difficulties
arise when instead of the morally indifferent fact of nationality
we have to deal with a fact which undoubtedly belongs to the
moral sphere, namely, that of criminality.

The connotation and the denotation of this idea vary with
regard to detail according to time and place. Much that was
formerly regarded as criminal is no longer recognised as such.
The very fact of criminality which had once extended to the

1 The question of war is historically connected with the fact of international hostility
but is not exhausted thereby. Apart from international wars there have been, and may
be in the future, intestine wars — social and religious. The problem of war must be
considered separately, and one of the subsequent chapters will be devoted to it.

299

300 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

criminal's family and relatives is, at a certain stage of spiritual
development, recognised as exclusively a personal characteristic.
But these historical changes do not affect the nature of the case.
Apart from the supposed criminals of different kinds, in all human
societies there have always been and to the end of the world there
will be real criminals, i.e. men with an evil will sufficiently strong
and decided to be directly realised in practice to the detriment of
their neighbours and the danger of the community as a whole.
How then are we to regard these avowedly bad people ? It is
clear that from the point of view of the absolute moral principle
the demands of altruism which received their final expression in
the Christian commandments of love must extend to these men
too. But the question, in the first place, is how we are to
combine love for the evil-doer with love for his victim, and
secondly, what should be the practical expression of our love for
the evil-doer or criminal so long as he is in this obviously abnormal
moral condition. No one can avoid this moral question. Even if
a person never came into personal contact with unquestionable
crimes and criminals, as a member of society he must know that
there exists a very complex administrative, legal and penal organi
sation intended for dealing with crime. He must, therefore, in
any case, determine his moral relation to these institutions — and
this in the last resort depends on his attitude to crime and the
criminal. What ought this attitude to be from the purely moral
point of view ? In dealing with this important question, I will
begin with the simplest case, which lies at the basis of all further
complications.

I

When one man is doing injury to another, e.g. when the
stronger man is beating the weaker, a person witnessing the
injury — if he takes the moral point of view — experiences a double
feeling and an impulse to a twofold course of action. In the
first place, he wants to defend the victim, and in the second, to
bring the injurer to his senses. Both impulses have the same moral
source — the recognition of another person's life and the respect
for another person's dignity, psychologically based upon the feeling
of pity or compassion. We experience direct pity for the being

THE PENAL QUESTION 301

who undergoes physical and mental suffering ; the mental suffer
ing, of which he is more or less clearly conscious, consists in the
fact that human dignity has been violated in his person. Such
external violation of human dignity in the injured is inevitably
connected with the inward degradation of that dignity in the
injurer ; in both cases it demands to be re-established. Psycho
logically, our feeling for the victim is very different from our
feeling for the aggressor — the first is pure pity, and in the second
anger and moral indignation predominate. But to be moral, that
indignation must not pass into injustice towards the wrong-doer,
into denying his human right, although that right materially
differs from the right of the victim. The latter has a right to
our defence, the former has a right to be brought to reason by us.
The moral basis of the two relations is, however, in the case of
rational beings, one and the same — the absolute worth or dignity
of human personality, which we recognise in others as well as in
ourselves. The twofold violation of that dignity taking place in
criminal assault — violation passive in the injured and active in the
injurer — calls forth a moral reaction in us, which is essentially the
same in both cases, in spite of the fact that its psychological
expression is different and even opposed. Of course, when the
injury directly or indirectly causes physical pain to the victim, the
latter excites a more strong and immediate feeling of pity ; but
speaking generally, the injurer ought to rouse even greater pity,
for he inwardly loses his moral dignity. However this may be,
the moral principle demands that we should recognise the right of
both to our help in re-establishing the violated norm both in the
one and in the other.

This deduction from the moral principle, demanding that in
the case of crime, i.e. of injury to man by man, we should take
up a moral attitude to both parties, is far from being universally
recognised. It must be defended against two kinds of adversaries.
Some — and they are in the majority — recognise only the right of
the victim or of the injured person (or community) to be defended
and avenged. The wrong-doer or the criminal, once his guilt has
been proved, they regard, at any rate in practice, as a rightless,
passive object of retribution, i.e. of more or less complete crushing
or extermination — ' hanging is too good for him,' ' to the dog a
dog's death,' is the popular sincere expression of this point of view.

302 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Its direct opposition to the moral principle and its incompati
bility with any degree of developed human feeling1 explains and
psychologically excuses the extreme opposite view, which is
beginning to gain ground in our time. This view recognises the
right of the injurer to be brought to reason by means of verbal
persuasion only, and admits of no compulsion with regard to him —
which practically amounts to depriving the injured person or
society of their right to defence. Their safety is made to depend
upon the success of persuasion, i.e. on something quite problematical,
which no one can control or be held responsible for. Let us
carefully consider the two opposed doctrines, which, for the sake
of brevity, I will describe respectively as the doctrine of retribution
and the doctrine of verbal persuasion.

II

The doctrine of retribution admits of a very real explanation
and of fictitious proof, and when dealing with it, it is very im
portant not to mix the one with the other. When an animal
is attacked by another about to devour it, the instinct of self-
preservation urges it to defend itself with its claws and teeth, or,
if these are not strong enough, to seek safety in flight. No one
would look for moral motives in this case any more than in the
physical self-defence of man, whose natural means of defence are
replaced or supplemented by artificial weapons. Even the savage,
however, does not as a rule live by himself, but belongs to some
social group — a family, a clan, a band. Therefore when he
encounters an enemy the affair does not end with their single
combat. Murder or any other injury inflicted upon a member of
a group is felt by the group as a whole and rouses in it a feeling
of resentment. In so far as that feeling includes pity for the
victim, we must recognise the presence of a moral element in it.
But no doubt the predominant part is played by the instinct of
collective self-preservation, like among bees and other social
animals. In defending one of its members, the clan or the family
is defending itself; in avenging one of its members, it is aveng
ing itself. But for the same reasons the aggressor too is defended

1 This is shown, among other things, by the fact that among the people, at any rate
among the Russian people, criminals are called the unfortunate.

THE PENAL QUESTION 303

by his clan or family. Single combats thus develop into wars
between entire communities. The Homeric poems have preserved
for us this stage of social relations by immortalising the Trojan
war, which arose out of a private injury inflicted by Paris upon
Menelaus. The history of the Arabs before Mohammed is full
of such wars. The ideas of crime and punishment do not really
exist at this stage at all ; the injurer is an enemy to be revenged
upon, not a criminal to be punished. The place which later on is
occupied by legal justice is here entirely taken up by the uni
versally recognised and absolutely binding custom of blood-
vengeance. This custom applies, of course, to injuries between
members of different clans or tribes. But, speaking generally,
other kind of injuries are not found at this stage of the communal
life. The cohesion of the social group bound together by kinship
is too strong, and the prestige of the patriarchal power too great,
for the individual to rebel against it. It is almost as impossible
as the conflict of an individual bee with the rest of the hive. No
doubt even at the primitive stage man retained his power of
arbitrary choice and did in some few instances manifest it. But
these exceptional cases were dealt with by exceptional measures
on the part of the patriarchal authority, and did not call forth any
general regulations. Things were changed with the transition to
the order of the state. When many clans and tribes for any
reason chose or were compelled to unite in one way or another
under one common leader with a more or less definite power
they lost their independence and forfeited the right of blood-
vengeance.

It is curious that philosophers and jurists, from ancient times
and almost down to our own day, made a priori theories with
regard to the origin of the state, as though all actual states had
arisen in some remote prehistoric times. This is due, of course,
to the extremely imperfect state of historical science. But what
may be permissible to Hobbes and even to Rousseau cannot be
allowed on the part of modern thinkers. The kinship-group stage
through which all nations have passed in one way or another is
not anything enigmatic : the clan is a direct consequence of the
natural blood-tie. The question is, then, as to the transition from
the stage of kinship to that of the state — and this can be an object of
historical observation. It is sufficient to mention the transformation

304 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

which took place in quite historical times of the disconnected
tribes and clans of Northern Arabia into a powerful Mohammedan
state. Its theocratic character is not an exception : such were to
a greater or lesser extent all the important states of antiquity.
Consider the way in which a state comes to be formed. A leader,
military or religious, or most frequently both, impelled by the
consciousness of his historic calling and also by personal motives,
gathers round himself men from different clans and tribes, thus
forming an inter-tribal nucleus. Around this nucleus entire
clans and tribes come to be grouped voluntarily or by compulsion,
receiving from the newly formed supreme power laws and
government, and to a greater or lesser extent losing their inde
pendence. When a social group has a government organised on
the principle of hierarchy with a supreme central authority at
the head, a regular army, a financial system based upon taxa
tion, and laws accompanied by penal sanctions, such a group
has the essential characteristics of a state. All the characteristics
enumerated were present in the Mohammedan community during
the later years of Mohammed's life. It is remarkable that the
history of the original formation of this state confirms to a certain
extent the ' social contract ' theory. All the chief actions of
the Arab prophet in this connection have been signalised by
formal treaties, beginning with the so-called 'oath of women,'
and ending with the conditions he dictated at Mecca after his
final victory over the tribe of the Koreishites and their allies. It
should be noted, too, that the fundamental point of all these treaties
is the abolition of blood-vengeance between the tribes and clans
which are to enter the new political union.

Hence arises the distinction, which did not exist before,
between private and public right. With regard to blood-vengeance
and other important matters, the interests of the collective
group were identical with the interests of the individual. This
was all the more natural as in a small social group such as the
clan or the tribe all, or at any rate most, of its members could
know each other personally, and thus each was for all, and all for
each — a concrete unit. In the state, however, the social group
embraces hundreds of thousands or even millions of men, and
the concrete personal relation between the parts and the whole
becomes impossible. A clear distinction is drawn between

THE PENAL QUESTION 305

private and public interests and between the corresponding
rights. In opposition to our modern legal notions, at that stage
murder, robbery, bodily injuries, etc., are treated as the violations
of private rights. Formerly, at the kinship-group stage, all such
crimes were regarded as directly affecting the interests of the com
munity, and the whole clan retaliated upon the culprit and his
kinsmen. When a wider political union was formed, this right
and duty of blood-vengeance was taken away from the clan, but did
not pass, unchanged, to the state. The new common authority,
the source of government and of law, could not at once enter into
the interests of all its numerous subjects to such an extent as to
defend them like its own. The head of the state cannot act and
feel like the elder of a clan. And we find that with regard to
the defence of private persons and property the state is at first
content with very little. For bodily injury or other violence to a
free man, and even for the murder of one, the culprit or his
relatives pay to the family of the victim compensation in money,
the amount of which is settled by mutual agreement (composltio\
and is generally very moderate. Ancient law-codes, e.g. the laws
of the Salic Francs, or our own Russkaya Pravda^ which are
relics of a primitive political order, are full of the enumerations
of fines differing according to the sex of the person and to other
circumstances. The direct and rapid transition from merciless
blood-vengeance, often accompanied by long and devastating wars
between entire tribes, to simple money compensation is remark
able j but from the point of view indicated it is perfectly natural.

At this stage of social development the only capital offences
are, strictly speaking, political crimes j1 all other, murder included,
are regarded as private quarrels rather than crimes.

Such elementary opposition between public and private
rights could not be stable. Money-fine for every kind of injury
to a private person does not satisfy the injured party (e.g. the
family of the murdered man), nor does it deter the wrong-doer,
especially if he be rich, from committing further crimes. Under
such conditions blood-vengeance for private offences, abolished by

1 The denotation of this idea differed in accordance with the historical circum
stances. In the Middle Ages, when the capital character of simple murder was not
yet clear to the legal consciousness, coining false money was punished by painful death,
as a crime detrimental to society as a whole, infringing upon the privileges of the
central authority and, in this sense, political.

X

306 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the state as opposed to its very conception, is renewed de facto
and threatens to destroy the raison d'etre of the state : if each has
to avenge his own wrongs, why should he bear the hardships
imposed by the new political order ? To justify the demands
that private persons make upon it, the state must really take
upon itself to protect their interests j in order to abolish the
private right of blood-vengeance, the state must make it a public
right, i.e. must itself exercise it. At this new and higher
stage the solidarity of the central power with its individual
subjects becomes more clear. The distinction between crimes
directed against the government (political crimes) and those in
fringing upon private interests only is still retained, but it is
now merely a distinction of degree. Each free man becomes a
citizen, i.e. a member of the state which undertakes to protect
his safety ; every violation of it is regarded by the state authority
as an attack upon its own rights, as a hostile action against the
social whole. All attacks against person and property are re
garded as violations of the law of the state, and no longer as
private offences, and are therefore, like political crimes, for the state
itself to avenge.

Ill

The legal doctrine of retribution has then a historical founda
tion in the sense that legal punishments still in use in our day
are a historical transformation of the primitive principle of blood-
vengeance. Originally, the injured person was avenged by a
more narrow social union called the cl,an, then by a wider and
more complex union called the state. Originally, the criminal
lost all human rights in the eyes of the clan he injured j now he
became the rightless subject of punishment in the eyes of the
state, which revenges itself on him for the violation of its laws.
The difference consists chiefly in the fact that at the patriarchal
stage the act of vengeance itself was accomplished very simply —
the aggressor was, at the first opportunity, killed like a dog — but
the consequences were very complex, and took the form of
endless inter-tribal wars. In the state, on the contrary, the act
of vengeance, which the public authorities took upon themselves,
was performed slowly and with all sorts of ceremonies, but no

THE PENAL QUESTION 307

further complications ensued, for the criminal had no one
sufficiently strong to avenge him— he was defenceless before the
power of the state.

But can the unquestionable fact that legal executions are
a historical transformation of blood -vengeance be used as an
argument in favour of the executions themselves, or in favour of
the principle of retaliation ? Does this historical basis justify
us in determining our attitude towards the criminal by the idea of
vengeance, the idea, i.e., of paying evil for evil, pain for pain ?
Speaking generally, logic does not allow us to make such deduc
tions from the genetic connection between two events. Not a
single Darwinian, so far as I am aware, drew the conclusion that
because man is descended from the lower animals he ought to be
a brute. From the fact that the urban community of Rome had
been originally established by a band of robbers, no historian
has yet concluded that the true principle of the Holy Roman
Empire ought to have been brigandage. With regard to the
question before us, it is clear that since we are dealing with the
evolution of blood-vengeance there is no reason to regard this
evolution as completed. We know that the relation of society
and of law to the criminal has undergone great changes. Pitiless
blood-vengeance was replaced by money-fines, and these were
replaced by 'civil executions,' extremely cruel at first, but,
beginning with the eighteenth century, getting more and more
mild. There is not the slightest rational ground to suppose
that the limit of mercy has already been reached and that the
gallows and the guillotine, penal servitude for life, and solitary
confinement must for ever remain in the penal code of civilised
countries.

But while historical progress clearly tends to eliminate the
principle of vengeance or of exact retaliation from our treatment
of criminals, and finally to abolish it altogether, many philosophers
and jurists still continue to urge abstract arguments in defence of
it. These arguments are so feeble that no doubt they will be
an object of astonishment and ridicule to posterity, just as
Aristotle's arguments in favour of slavery, or the, ecclesiastical
proofs of the flatness of the earth, are a source of wonder to us
now. The pseudo-arguments used by the champions of the
doctrine of retribution are not in themselves worth considering.

308 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

But since they are still repeated by authors worthy of respect,
and since the subject is of vital importance, the refutation of them
ought also to be repeated.

"Crime is a violation of right ; right must be re-established ;
punishment, i.e. equal violation of the criminal's right, performed
in accordance with a definite law by public authority (in contra
distinction to private vengeance), balances the first violation, and
thus right is re-established." This pseudo-argument turns on
the term c right.' But concrete right is always somebody's right
(there must be a subject of rights}. Whose right is then here
referred to ? In the first place, apparently, it is the right of the
injured person. Let us put this concrete content in the place
of the abstract term. Peaceful shepherd Abel has no doubt a
right to exist and to enjoy all the good things of life ; but a
wicked man, Cain, comes and deprives him of this right by
murdering him. The violated right must be re-established ;
to do so public authority comes on the scene and, against
the direct warning of Holy Writ (Genesis iv. 15), hangs the
murderer. Well, does this re-establish Abel's right to live ?
Since no one but an inmate of Bedlam would affirm that the
execution of the murderer raises the victim from the dead, we
must take the word 'right' in this connection to mean, not
the right of the injured person, but of somebody else. The
society or the state l may be the subject of the right violated by
the crime. All private rights (of life, of property, etc.) are
guaranteed by the state ; it answers for their inviolability in
placing them under the defence of its laws. The law forbidding
private persons to take the life of their fellow-citizens at their
own discretion is proclaimed by the state in its own right, and
therefore the violation of the law (a murder) means violation of
the right of the state. The execution of the murderer re
establishes the right of the state and the dignity of the law —
not the right of the murdered man.2

1 In this connection either term may be used indifferently.

2 In the opinion of one of my critics, I am wrong in supposing that a crime must
necessarily be the violation of somebody's right. Apart from any subject of rights —
individual or collective, private or public — and also apart from the moral norm or the
absolute good, there exists, it is urged, right as such, — an independent objective essence,
and the proper object of punishment is the satisfaction of this self-existent right. The
critic is mistaken in thinking that I am ignorant of this metaphysical impersonation of

THE PENAL QUESTION 309

What justice this argument contains has nothing to do with
the case. There is no doubt that once laws exist, their viola
tion must not be overlooked, and that it is the business of the
state to see to it. But we are not dealing here with the general
question of the punishability of crime, for in this respect all crimes
are identical. If a law is sacred in itself as proceeding from the
state, this is true of all laws in an equal degree. They all equally
express the right of the state ; and the violation of any law what
ever is the violation of this supreme right. Material differences
between crimes have to do with the particular interests which
are infringed ; but on its formal side, in relation to what is
universal^ that is to the state as such, and to its law and power,
every crime, if, of course, it is committed by a responsible agent,
presupposes a will opposed to the law, a will that sets it at nought
and is therefore criminal — and from this point of view all crimes
ought logically to require the same punishment. But the
difference in punishments for the different crimes exists in all
legal codes, and it obviously presupposes, in addition to the general
principle of punishability, a certain other specific principle which
determines the particular connection between this crime and this
punishment. The doctrine of retribution discovers this connection
in the fact that the right violated by a particular criminal action
is re-established by a corresponding or equal action — for instance,
a murderer must be killed. There can, however, be no real
correspondence or equality. The most famous champions of the
doctrine conceive of the matter as follows : Right is something
positive, say a + (plus); the violation of it is something negative,
- (a minus). If the negation in the form of crime has taken place
(e.g. a man has been deprived of life), it must call forth equal
negation in the form of punishment (taking the murderer's life).
Then such double negation, or the negation of the negative, will
once more bring about a positive state, i.e. re-establish the right :
minus multiplied by minus makes plus. It is difficult to take this
4 play of mind ' seriously ; it should be noted, however, that the idea

the ancient Moloch. But there is no need for me to go into it, since no serious crimino-
logist has for a long time past upheld it. It is obvious that ' right ' is by its very
meaning a relation between subjects, conditioned by certain moral and practical norms,
and that therefore a subjectless and unrelated right is an Unding — a thought that has
no content.

310 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

of the negation of the negative logically expresses a direct inner
relation between two opposed acts. Thus, for instance, if an
impulse of ill-will in man is ' negative,' is, namely, a negation
of the moral norm, the opposite act of will, suppressing that
impulse, will indeed be a 'negation of the negative,' and the
result will be a positive one — man's affirmation of himself as
normal. Similarly, if crime as an active expression of ill-will is
negative, the criminal's active repentance will be a negation of the
negative (that is, not of the fact, of course, but of the inner cause
that produced it), and the result will again be positive — his moral
regeneration. But the execution of the criminal has obviously
no such significance ; in this case the negation is directed, as in
the crime itself, upon something positive — upon human life. It
cannot indeed be maintained that the execution of the criminal
negates his crime, for that crime is an irrevocably accomplished
fact, and, according to the remark of the Fathers of the Church,
God Himself cannot undo what has been done. Nor does it
negate the criminal's evil will, for the criminal has either repented
of his crime — and in that case there is no longer any evil will —
or he remains obdurate to the end, and then his will is inaccessible
to the treatment he is receiving ; and in any case an external
enforced action can neither cancel nor change the inner state
of will. What, then, is negated by the execution of the
criminal is not his evil will, but the positive good of life, — and
this is once more a simple negation, and not a 'negation of the
negative.' But a simple succession of two negatives cannot lead
to anything positive. The misuse of the algebraic formula makes
the argument simply ridiculous. In order that two minuses, that
is, two negative quantities, should make a plus, it is not sufficient
to place them one after another, but it is necessary to multiply one
by the other. But there is no intelligible meaning in multiplying
crime by punishment?

IV

The inherent absurdity of the doctrine of retribution or
'avenging justice' is emphasised by the fact that, with a few

1 It is obvious that we cannot in this case go further than addition (of the material
results). The corpse of the murdered victim may be added to the corpse of the hanged
murderer and then there will be two corpses — i.e. two negative quantities.

THE PENAL QUESTION 31 1

exceptions, it has no relation whatever to the existing penal laws.
Strictly speaking, there is only one case in which it appears to be
applicable — that of the death penalty for murder. Therefore the
pseudo-philosophical arguments in favour of this doctrine, the gist
of which has been considered above, refer to this single instance
only — a bad omen for a principle which lays claim to universal
significance. In Russia, where capital punishment is the penalty
for certain political crimes only, there is not even this one case of
apparent correspondence. No trace of equality between crime
and punishment can be detected in the case of parricide and penal
servitude for life, or simple murder with a view to robbery and
twelve years' penal servitude. The best argument against the
doctrine is the circumstance that it finds its fullest application in
the penal codes of some half-savage peoples, or in the laws pre
valent at the epoch of barbarism, when, e.g.^ for inflicting a
certain injury the culprit underwent a similar injury, for speaking
insolent words a person had his tongue cut out, etc. A prin
ciple the application of which proves to be incompatible with a
certain degree of culture and refinement is condemned by the
verdict of history.

In modern times the doctrine of re-establishing right by means
of equal retribution was, if I am not mistaken, defended by
abstract philosophers more than by jurists. The latter under
stand the equalisation of crime with punishment in the relative
and quantitative sense only (the measure of punishment). They
demand, /.*., that a crime more grave than another should be
punished more severely, so that there should be a scale of punish
ments corresponding to the scale of crimes. -But the basis and,
consequently, the apex of the penal ladder remains indefinite, and
therefore the punishments may be either inhumanly cruel or
extremely mild. Such a scale of penalties has existed in the
penal codes in which all, or almost all, simple crimes were
punished by a fine : a larger fine was paid for the murder of a
man than for the murder of a woman, for a serious bodily injury
than for a slight one, etc. On the other hand, codes in which
the penalty for theft was hanging punished more heinous crimes
by capital punishment accompanied by various degrees of torture.
What is in this case immoral is the cruelty of the punishments,
and not, of course, their graduated character.

312 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

From the moral point of view it is of interest that the penal
laws show a tendency to preserve the cruel punishments as far as
possible. This tendency has no doubt become weaker, but it has
not yet disappeared altogether. Not finding a sufficiently secure
foundation in the pseudo-rational principle of ' re-established right,'
it seeks empirical support in the principle of intimidation. In
truth, the latter has always formed part of the doctrine of retribu
tion. The popular aphorism, c To a dog a dog's death,' has always
been accompanied by the addition, * as a warning to others.'

This principle can hardly be said to be wholly valid even from
the utilitarian and empirical point of view. No doubt fear is an
important human instinct, but it has no decisive significance for
man. The perpetually increasing number of suicides proves that,
in many, death itself inspires no fear. Prolonged solitary con
finement or penal servitude may in themselves be more terrible
but they do not produce an immediate intimidating effect. I
will not dwell upon these and other well-known arguments against
the theory of intimidation, such as the contention that the
criminal always hopes to avoid detection and escape punishment,
or that the enormous majority of crimes are committed under the
influence of some passion which stifles the voice of sagacity.
The relative force of all these arguments is open to dispute. In
disputable refutation of the deterrent theory is only possible from
the moral point of view. It is refuted, first, on the ground of
principle, as directly opposed to the fundamental law of morality,
and, secondly, by the fact that this opposition compels the
champions of intimidation to be inconsistent and gradually to
relinquish, on the strength of moral motives, the most clear and
effective demands of their own theory. It is understood, of
course, that I am referring here to intimidation as a fundamental
principle of legal justice and not merely as a psychological fact,
which naturally accompanies any method of dealing with crime.
Even supposing it were intended to reform criminals by means of
moral exhortation alone, the prospect of such tutelage, however
mild and rational, might intimidate vain and self-willed men and
deter them from criminal actions. Obviously, however, this is
not what is meant by the theory which regards intimidation as
the essence and the direct object of punishment, and not as an
indirect consequence of it.

THE PENAL QUESTION 313

The moral principle asserts that human dignity must be
respected in every person, and that therefore no one may be made
merely a means of or an instrument for the advantage of others.
According to the deterrent theory, however, the criminal who is
being punished is regarded as merely a means for intimidating
others and safeguarding public safety. The penal law may, of
course, intend to benefit the criminal himself, by deterring him,
through fear of punishment, from committing the crime. But once
the crime has been committed, this motive obviously disappears,
and the criminal in being punished becomes solely a means of intimi
dating others, i.e. a means to an end external to him; and this is in
direct contradiction to the unconditional law of morality. From
the moral point of view a punishment inspiring fear would only
be permissible as a threat ; but a threat which is never fulfilled
loses its meaning. Thus, the principle of penal intimidation can
be moral only on condition of being useless, and can be materially
useful only on condition of being applied immorally.

In point of fact the theory of intimidation finally lost its
sting from the time when all civilised and half-civilised countries
abolished cruel corporal punishments and capital punishment
accompanied by torture. It is clear that if the object of punish
ment is to intimidate both the criminal and others, these means
are certainly the most effective and rational. Why then do the
champions of intimidation renounce the true and the only reliable
means of intimidation ? Probably because they consider these
means immoral and opposed to the demands of pity and humanity.
In that case, however, intimidation ceases to be the determining
factor in punishment. It must be one or the other : either the
meaning of punishment is intimidation — and in that case execution
accompanied by torture must be admitted as pre-eminently in
timidating ; or the nature of punishment is determined by the
moral principle — and in that case intimidation must be given up
altogether, as a motive essentially immoral.1

1 In the eighteenth century, when the movement against the cruelty of penal laws was
at its height, several writers sought to prove that torturing prisoners is both inhuman
and useless as a deterrent, for it does not prevent any one from committing crimes. If
this contention could be substantiated it would deprive the theory of intimidation of
all meaning whatever. It is obvious that if even painful executions are insufficient to
intimidate criminals, punishments more mild are still less likely to do so.

3H THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

The circumstance that the most consistent forms of retribution
and intimidation have disappeared from modern penal codes, in
spite of the fact that from the first point of view such forms must
be recognised as the most just, and from the second as the most
effective, is sufficient to prove that a different, a moral point of
view has penetrated into this sphere and made considerable pro
gress in it. This undoubted and fairly rapid progress has failed
to affect the penal codes of savage or barbarian peoples alone —
such as the Abyssinians or the Chinese ; and even they, indeed,
are about to enter into the general life of civilised humanity.
Nevertheless, our own penal systems — I mean those of Europe
and America — still retain much unnecessary violence and cruelty,
which can only be explained as a dead legacy of the defunct
principles of retribution and intimidation. Among these vestiges
of the past are capital punishment, which is still being obstinately
defended though it has lost its grounds ; indefinite deprivation of
liberty ; penal servitude ; exile into distant countries with unbear
able conditions of life, etc.

All this systematic cruelty is revolting to the moral feeling
and brings about a change in our original attitude towards the
criminal. Pity to the injured person and the impulse to defend
him set us against the injurer (the criminal). But when society,
which is incomparably stronger than the individual criminal, turns
upon him its insatiable hostility after he has been disarmed, and
makes him undergo prolonged suffering, it is he who becomes
the injured party and excites in us pity and a desire to protect him.
Although the legal theory and the legal practice have decidedly
renounced consistent application of the principles of retribution and
intimidation, they have not given up the principles themselves.
The system of punishments that exists in civilised countries is
a meaningless and lifeless compromise between these worthless
principles on the one hand and certain demands of humanity and
justice on the other. In truth, what we find are simply the more
or less softened vestiges of the old brutality, with no uniting
thought, no guiding principle involved. The compromise cannot

THE PENAL QUESTION 315

help us to solve the question that is essential for the moral con
sciousness : does the fact of crime deprive the criminal of his
human rights, or does it not ? If it does not^ how can we rob
him of the first condition of any right — of existence, as is done in
the case of capital punishment ? And if the fact of crime does
deprive the criminal of his natural rights, what need is there of
legal ceremony with rightless beings ? Empirically this dilemma
is solved by a distinction being drawn between crimes, some of
which are taken to deprive the criminal of human rights, and
others merely to limit them to a greater or lesser extent. Both
the principle and the degree of such limitation are, however,
changeable and indefinite, and the very distinction between the
two kinds of crime proves to be arbitrary and to differ according
to time and place. Thus, for instance, in Western Europe political
crimes do not involve the loss of human rights, while in Russia the
old view is still in full force, and these crimes are regarded as the
most heinous of all. One would have thought that so important
a fact as the transformation of man from an independent being
fully possessed of rights into passive material for punitary exercises
must depend upon some objective reason or determining principle,
the same for all times and at all places. In fact, however, it
appears that in order to change from a person into a thing, man
must in one country commit a simple murder ; in another, a
murder with aggravating circumstances ; in the third, some
political crime, etc.

The extremely unsatisfactory condition of this important
question, the frivolous attitude to the life and destiny of men are
revolting to the intellect and conscience, and produce a reaction
of the moral feeling. Unfortunately, however, this reaction
leads many moralists to the opposite extreme, and induces them
to reject the idea of punishment in general, i.e. in the sense
of real opposition to crime. According to this modern doctrine,
violence or compulsion towards any one is never permissible, and
therefore the criminal may only be dealt with by rational persua
sion. The merit of this doctrine is the moral purity of its pur
pose ; its defect is that the purpose cannot be realised in the way
advocated. The principle of taking up a passive attitude towards
criminals not only rejects retribution and intimidation (which is
the right thing to do), but also excludes measures intended to

3i6 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

prevent crimes and to improve criminals. From this point of
view the state has not the right to lock up, even only for a time,
a vicious murderer, though the circumstances of the case make
it clear that he will continue his crimes j nor has it a right to
place the criminal in a more normal environment, even if it
were exclusively for his own good. Similarly, it is contended
that a private person has no right forcibly to detain a would-be
murderer from rushing at his victim, but may only address him
with words of exhortation. In criticising the theory 1 will con
sider this instance of individual opposition to crime, as it is more
simple and fundamental.

It is only in extremely rare, exceptional cases that men who
are depraved and capable of deliberate crime are affected by words
of rational persuasion. To ascribe beforehand such exceptional
power to one's own words would be morbid self-conceit ; to be
content with words without being certain of their success when a
man's life is at stake would be inhuman. The victim has a right
to all the help we can render him, and not to verbal intercession
only, which, in the vast majority of cases, can be nothing but
comical. In the same way, the aggressor has a right to all the
help we can give to restrain him from a deed which is for him
even a greater disaster than for his victim. Only after having
stopped his action can we with calm conscience address words of
exhortation to him. If I see the criminal's arm raised to murder
his victim and I seize hold of it, will this be a case of immoral
violence ? It will no doubt be violence, but so far from being
immoral, it will be conscientiously binding^ and will directly follow
from the demands of the moral principle. In restraining a man
from murder I actively respect and support his human dignity,
which is seriously menaced by his carrying out his intention. It
would be strange to believe that the very fact of such violence —
i.e. a certain contact of the muscles of my arm with the muscles
of the murderer's arm, and the necessary consequences of the
contact — contains an element of immorality. Why, in that case
it would be immoral to pull a drowning man out of water, for it
too cannot be done without much physical exertion and some
physical pain to the person who is being saved. If it is per
missible and a moral duty to pull a drowning man out of the
water, even if he resists, it is all the more permissible to pull a

THE PENAL QUESTION 317

criminal away from his victim, even if it means bruises, scratches,
and dislocations.1

It must be one or the other. Either the criminal whom we
restrain has not yet lost all human feeling, and then he will, of
course, be grateful for having been saved in time from sin — no less
than the drowning man is grateful for having been taken out of the
water j in that case, the violence which he suffered was done with
his own tacit consent, and his right has not been violated, so that,
strictly speaking, there has been no violence at all, since volenti
non fit injuria.2 Or the criminal has lost human feeling to such
an extent that he is annoyed at having been prevented from cut
ting his victim's throat. But to address a man in such a condi
tion with words of rational persuasion would be the height of
absurdity ; it would be the same as preaching to one who is dead-
drunk the advantages of abstinence, instead of pouring cold water
over him.

Were the fact of physical violence, i.e. of the application of
muscular force, in itself bad or immoral, it would, of course, be
wrong to use this bad means even with the best of intentions— it
would be admitting the immoral rule that the purpose justifies the
means. To resist evil by evil is wrong and useless ; to hate the
evil-doer for his crime and therefore to revenge oneself on him is
childish. But there is no evil in restraining the evil-doer from
crime for the sake of his own good and without any hatred of
him. Since there is nothing bad in muscular force as such, the
moral or the immoral character of its application depends in each
case upon the intention of the person and the circumstances of
the case. Physical force rationally used for the real good of others,
both moral and material, is a good and not a bad means, and such
application of it, so far from being forbidden, is directly prescribed
by the moral principle. The dividing line between the moral
and immoral use of physical compulsion may be a fine one, but it
is perfectly clear and definite. The whole point is the attitude

1 What, however, if in restraining the murderer we may in the struggle unintentionally
cause him grave injuries and even death ? It will be a great misfortune for us, and we
will grieve over it as over an involuntary sin ; but, in any case, unintentionally to kill a
criminal is a lesser sin than deliberately to allow an intentional murder of an innocent
person.

2 'There is no injury to the willing,' i.e. an action which is in accordance with the
will of the person who suffers it cannot be a violation of his right.

3i8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

we take towards the evil-doer in resisting evil. If we retain a
human, moral relation to him and are thinking of his own good,
there will obviously be nothing immoral in our enforced violence —
no trace of cruelty or revenge. The violence will, in that case,
be simply an inevitable condition of our helping the man, just
like a surgical operation or the locking up of a dangerous lunatic.

The moral principle forbids to make a human being merely
a means to extraneous purposes, i.e. to ends which do not include
his own good. If, therefore, in resisting crime we regard the
criminal simply as a means for the defence or the satisfaction of
the injured person or society, our action is immoral, even though
its motive might be unselfish pity for the victim and genuine
anxiety for public safety. From the moral point of view this is
not sufficient. We ought to pity both the victim and the criminal ;
and if we do so, if we really have the good of them both in view,
reason and conscience will tell us what measure and what form
of physical compulsion is necessary.

Moral questions are finally decided by conscience, and I
confidently ask every one to turn to his own inner experience
(imaginary, if there has not been any other) and say in which
of the two cases does conscience reproach us more : in the case
when, being able to prevent a crime we had callously passed by,
saying a few useless words, or when we had actually prevented it
even at the expense of inflicting certain physical injuries. Every
one understands that in a. perfect society there must be no compulsion
at all. But the perfection has yet to be attained ; and it is quite
obvious that to let evil and irrational men exterminate, unhindered,
the normal people is not the right method of creating the perfect
society. What is desirable is the organisation of the good, and
not the freedom of evil. "But," the modern sophists will urge,
" society has often taken for evil what afterwards proved to be a
good, and has persecuted innocent men as criminals ; therefore
legal justice is worth nothing, and all compulsion must be given
up." This argument is not my invention — I have read and heard
it many times. Reasoning in this way we should have to say that
the mistakes in the astronomical theories of Ptolemy are a
sufficient ground for giving up astronomy, and that the errors of
the alchemists prove chemistry to be worthless.

It is difficult to understand how men of a different stamp from

THE PENAL QUESTION 319

obvious sophists can defend so poor a doctrine. The truth is, I
think, that its real foundation is mystical and not ethical. The
idea underlying the doctrine seems to be this : " That which seems
to us to be evil, may not be evil at all ; the Deity or Providence
knows better than we do the true connection of things and the
way to produce real good out of apparent evil. We can only know
and judge our own inner states and not the objective signifi
cance and consequences of our own and other people's actions."
It must be confessed that to a religious mind this view is
extremely attractive ; nevertheless, it is a mistaken view. The
truth of a theory is tested by the fact whether it can be con
sistently carried out without landing us in contradictions and
absurdities. The view in question cannot bear this test. If our
ignorance of all the objective consequences of our own and other
people's actions were a sufficient ground for remaining inactive,
we ought not to resist our own passions and evil impulses. For
aught we know, the all- merciful Providence might derive
wonderful results from a person's profligacy, drunkenness, ill-
feeling to his neighbours, etc.

Suppose, for instance, that for motives of abstinence a man
stayed away from a public-house. But had he not resisted his
inclination and gone, he would on his way back have found a
half-frozen puppy. Being in a condition when one is inclined
to be sentimental, he would have picked up the puppy and warmed
it back to life. The puppy, upon growing up into a big dog, would
have saved a little girl from drowning in the pond ; and the little
girl would eventually become the mother of a great man. Now,
however, the misplaced abstinence has interfered with the plans
of Providence. The puppy was frozen, the little girl drowned,
and the great man is doomed to remain for ever unborn. Another
person, given to anger, felt inclined to slap in the face the man
he was arguing with, but thought that this would be wrong, and
restrained himself. And yet, had he not controlled his anger, the
injured person would have taken the opportunity to turn him the
other cheek, and would have thus softened the heart of the
aggressor. Virtue would have doubly triumphed, while, as it was,
their meeting ended in nothing.

The doctrine which absolutely rejects all forcible resistance to
evil, or all defence of one's neighbours by means of physical force,

320 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

is really based upon an argument of this nature. A man has
saved another's life by using force and disarming the brigand who
attacked him. But, later on, the person saved became a terrible
malefactor, far worse than the brigand ; therefore it would have
been better not to have saved him. Exactly the same disappoint
ment, however, might ensue if the man were threatened by a
rabid wolf instead of by a brigand. Does it follow, then, that
we are not to defend any one even from wild beasts ? Besides,
when I save people in a fire or in an inundation, it may very
well happen that the saved may subsequently be extremely un
happy or prove to be terrible scoundrels, so that it would have
been better for them to have been burnt or drowned. Does it
follow that one ought not to help any one in any calamity whatso
ever ? Actively helping one's neighbours is a direct and positive
demand of morality. If we renounce the duty of kindness on the
ground that actions inspired by that feeling may have bad con
sequences unknown to us, we can just as well for the same reason
renounce the duty of abstinence and all others, because these, too,
may prompt us to actions which may lead to evil consequences,
as in the examples cited above. If, however, that which appears
to us to be good leads to evil, then, vice versa^ that which appears
to us to be evil may lead to good. Perhaps, then, the best plan
would be to do evil straight away in order that good might ensue.
Fortunately, this whole line of thought is self-destructive, for the
series of unknown events may go further than we think. Take
the first instance, in which Mr. X., by resisting his inclination
for strong drink, indirectly prevented the birth of a great man.
We cannot tell whether this great man would not have caused
great disasters to humanity ; and if he would, it is just as well
that he has not been born ; therefore Mr. X. did very well in
making himself stay at home. In the same way, we do not
know what further consequences might ensue from the triumph
of virtue due to a slap in the face magnanimously endured. It is
highly probable that this extreme magnanimity would eventually
lead to spiritual pride, which is the worst of all sins, and thus
ruin the man's soul. Therefore Mr. Y. did well in controlling
his anger and preventing the magnanimity of his opponent from
showing itself. Altogether, since we know nothing for certain,
we have equal right to make all sorts of suppositions with regard

THE PENAL QUESTION 321

to possibilities. But it by no means follows that because we do
not know what consequences our actions may lead to, we
ought to refrain from all action. This conclusion would only
be correct if we knew for certain that the consequences would
be bad. Since, however, they may equally be good or bad,
we have equal ground (or, rather, equal absence of ground) for
action or inaction. All these reflections on the indirect results of
our actions can then have no practical significance. They could
be a real determining force in our life only if we could know
more than the immediate links in the series of consequences.
The immediate links may be always supposed to be followed by
further links of an opposite character and destructive of our con
clusion. It would therefore be necessary to know the whole series
of consequences down to the end of the world, which is impossible
for us.

Our actions or refusal to act must then be determined, not by
the consideration of their possible indirect consequences unknown
to us, but by impulses directly following from the positive demands
of the moral principle. This is true not only from the ethical
but also from the mystical point of view. If everything be referred
back to Providence, it is certainly not without Its knowledge that
man possesses reason and conscience, which tell him in each
concrete case what direct good he can do, independently of all
indirect consequences. And if we believe in Providence, we
certainly believe also that It cannot allow that actions conformable
to reason and conscience should ultimately lead to evil. If we
know that it is immoral or opposed to human dignity to stupefy
oneself with strong drink, our conscience will not permit us to
consider whether in the state of intoxication we might not do
something which would subsequently lead to good results.
Similarly, if from a purely moral motive, apart from any malice or
revenge, we prevented a brigand from killing a man, it will
never occur to us to argue that this may perhaps lead to some evil,
and that it might have been better to let the murder take place.

Through our reason and conscience we know for certain that
carnal passions — drunkenness or profligacy — are bad in themselves
and ought to be restrained. The same reason and conscience tell
us with equal certainty that active love is good in itself and that
one must act in the spirit of it — to help our neighbours, to defend

Y

322 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

them from the elements, from wild beasts, and also from men
who are evil or insane. Therefore the man who from a pure
impulse of pity snatches away the knife from a would-be
murderer's hand and thus saves him from an extra sin and his
victim from a violent death, or the man who uses physical
violence to prevent a patient ill with delirium tremens from freely
running about the streets, will always be justified by his own con
science and by the universal verdict of humanity as one who
carried out in practice the moral demand : Help all as much as in
thee lies.

Providence certainly extracts good from our evil, but from
our good it derives a still greater good. And what is of especial
importance is that this second kind of good comes about with
our direct and active participation, while the first, that derived
from our evil, does not concern us nor belong to us. It is better
to be a helper than a dead instrument of the all- merciful
Providence.

VI

Punishment as intimidating revenge (the typical instance of
which is capital punishment) cannot from the moral point of view
be justified, for it denies the criminal his human character, deprives
him of the right of existence which belongs to every person, and
makes him a passive instrument of other people's safety. No
more, however, can we justify from the moral point of view an
indifferent attitude to crime, the attitude of not resisting it. It
does not take into account the right of the injured party to be
protected nor the right of the whole society to a secure existence,
and makes everything depend upon the arbitrary will of the worst
people. The moral principle demands real resistance to crimes,
and determines this resistance (or punishment in the wide sense of
the term, as distinct from the idea of retribution) as a rightful
means of active pity ', legally and forcibly limiting the external expres
sions of evil will) not merely for the sake of the safety of the peaceful
members of society, but also in the interests of the criminal himself.
Thus the true conception of punishment is many-sided, but
each aspect is equally conditioned by the universal moral
principle of pity, which includes both the injured and the

THE PENAL QUESTION 323

injurer. The victim of a crime has a right to protection and,
as far as possible, to compensation j society has a right to safety ;
the criminal has a right to correction and reformation. Resistance
to crimes that is to be consistent with the moral principle must
realise or, at any rate, aim at an equal realisation of those three
rights.

Protection of individuals, public safety, and the subsequent good
of the criminal, demand in the first place that the person guilty of
a crime should be for a time deprived of liberty. In the interests
of his relatives and his own, a spendthrift is rightly deprived of
freedom in the administration of his property. It is all the more
just and necessary that a murderer or a seducer should be deprived
of freedom in his line of activity. For the criminal himself
deprivation of freedom is especially important as a pause in the
development of the evil will, as an opportunity to bethink himself
and repent.

At the present time, the criminal's fate is finally decided by the
court, which both determines his guilt and decrees his punishment.
If, however, the motives of revenge and intimidation are consistently
banished from penal law, the conception of punishment as of a
measure determined beforehand and, in truth, arbitrarily^ must
disappear also. The consequences of the crime for the criminal
must stand in a natural and inner relation with his real condition.
The law court, having established the fact of guilt, must then
determine its nature, the degree of the criminal's responsibility and
of his further danger to society, that is, it must make a diagnosis
and a prognosis of the moral disease. But it is opposed to reason to
prescribe unconditionally the means and the length of the period of
treatment. The course and the methods of treatment must differ
according to the changes in the course of the illness, and the court
must leave this to penitentiary institutions, into the hands of which
the criminal should pass. A short time ago this idea would have
been thought an unheard-of heresy, but of late attempts have been
made to realise it in a few countries (e.g. in Belgium and Ireland),
in which conditional sentences may be passed. In certain cases the
criminal is sentenced to a definite punishment, but undergoes it
only if he repeats his crime. If he does not, he remains free, and his
first crime is regarded as accidental. In other cases, the sentence
is conditional with regard to the length of imprisonment, which

3*4

may be shortened according to the subsequent behaviour of the
criminal. From the point of view of principle these conditional
sentences are an advance of enormous importance.

VII

There had been a time when men suffering from mental disease
were treated like wild beasts, chained, beaten, etc. Less than a
hundred years ago it was considered to be the right thing ; but
now we remember it with horror. Since the rate of progress is
continually increasing, I hope to live to a time when prisons and
penal servitude of the present day will be looked upon in the same
way as we now look upon the old-fashioned asylums with iron
cages for the patients. Although the penal system has undoubtedly
progressed of late, it is still largely determined by the old idea of
punishment as torment deliberately inflicted on the criminal, in
accordance with the principle, l The thief deserves all he gets.'

In the true conception of punishment its positive end, so far as
the criminal is concerned, is not to cause him physical pain, but to
heal or reform him morally. This idea has been accepted long
ago (chiefly by theologians, partly by philosophers, and by a very
few jurists), but it calls forth strong opposition on the part of
jurists and of a certain school of anthropologists. From the legal
side it is urged that to correct the criminal means to intrude upon
his inner life, which the state and society have no right to do.
There are two misconceptions involved here. In the first place,
the task of reforming criminals is, in the respect we are here con
sidering, merely an instance of the positive influence which the
society (or the state) ought to exert upon such members of it as
are in some respects deficient, and therefore not fully possessed of
rights. If such influence is rejected on principle as intrusion into
the individual's inner life, it will be necessary to reject also public
education of children, treatment of lunatics in public asylums, etc.

And in what sense can it be said to be an intrusion into the
inner world ? In truth, by the fact of his crime the criminal has
bared or exposed his inner world, and is in need of influence in the
opposite direction which would enable him once more to withdraw
into the normal boundaries. It is particularly surprising that
although the argument recognises the right of society to put a

THE PENAL QUESTION 325

man into demoralising conditions (such as our present prisons and
penal servitude, which the jurists do not reject), it denies the right
and the duty of society to put him into conditions that might
render him moral.

The second misunderstanding consists in imagining that
reformation of the criminal means forcing upon him ready-made
principles of morality. But why regard incompetence as a
principle ? When a criminal is capable of reformation at all, it
consists, of course, chiefly in self-reformation. External influences
must simply put the man into conditions most favourable for it,
help him and support him in this inner work.

The anthropological argument is that criminal tendencies are
innate and therefore incorrigible. That there exist born criminals
and hereditary criminals, there is no doubt. That some of them
are incorrigible it is difficult to deny. But the statement that all
criminals or even the majority of them are incorrigible is absolutely
arbitrary and does not deserve to be dwelt upon. If, however, all
we may admit is that some criminals are incorrigible, no one can or
has a right to be certain beforehand that this particular criminal
belongs to that group. All therefore ought to be put into con
ditions most favourable for possible reformation. The first and
the most important condition is, of course, that at the head of penal
institutions should stand men capable of so high and difficult a
task — the best of jurists, alienists, and men with a religious calling.

Public guardianship over the criminal, entrusted to competent
persons with a view to his possible reformation, — this is the only
conception of 4 punishment ' or positive resistance to crime
compatible with the moral principle. A penal system based upon
it will be more just and humane than the present one, and will, at
the same time, be certainly more efficient.

CHAPTER VII

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION FROM THE MORAL POINT OF VIEW

I

IF individuals and nations learnt to value the national peculiarities
of foreign peoples as much as they value their own ; if within
each nation individual criminals were, as far as possible, reformed
by re-education and rational guardianship, from which all
vestige of legal ferocity were eliminated, — this moral solution
of the national and the penal questions would still leave
untouched an important cause both of national hostility and of
criminality, namely, the economic cause. The chief reason
why Americans hate the Chinese is certainly not that the
Chinese wear plaits and follow the moral teaching of Confucius,
but that they are dangerous rivals in the economic sphere.
Chinese labourers in California are persecuted for the same
cause for which Italians are ill-treated in southern France,
Switzerland, and Brazil. In exactly the same way the feeling
against the Jews, whatever the inmost causes of it may be,
clearly rests upon and is obviously due to economic considera
tions. Individual criminality is not created by environment, but
it is largely kept up and encouraged by pauperism, excessive
mechanical labour, and the inevitable coarsening that follows
therefrom. The influence of the most rational and humane
penal system upon individual criminals would have but little
general effect so long as these conditions prevailed. The bad
effect of the economic conditions of the present day upon the
national and the criminal questions is obviously due to the fact
that these conditions are in themselves morally wrong. Their
abnormality is manifested in the economic sphere itself, since

326

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 327

the struggle between the different classes of society for the
possession of material goods is becoming more and more acute,
and in many countries of Western Europe and America
threatens to become a deadly strife.

For a man who takes the moral point of view it is as im
possible to take part in this socially-economic struggle as to
participate in the hostility between races and nations. But
at the same time it is impossible for him to remain indifferent
to the material position of his neighbours. If the elementary
moral feeling of pity, which has received its highest sanction
in the Gospel, demands that we should feed the hungry,
give drink to the thirsty, and warm the cold, this demand
does not, of course, lose its force when the cold and hungry
number millions instead of dozens. And if alone I cannot
help these millions, and am not therefore morally bound to do
so, I can and must help them together with others. My personal
duty becomes a collective one — it still remains my own, although
it becomes wider in so far as I participate in the collective whole
and its universal task. The very fact of economic distress proves
that economic conditions are not connected with the principle
of the good as they should be, that they are not morally organised.
A whole pseudo-scientific school of conservative anarchists in
economics directly denied, and still denies, though without the
old self-confidence, all ethical principles and all organisation in
the sphere of economic relations. The prevalence of this school
had much to do with the birth of revolutionary anarchism. On
the other hand, the many varieties of socialism, both radical and
conservative, do more to detect the presence of the disease than
to offer a real cure for it.

The defect of the orthodox school of political economy — the
liberal or, more exactly, the anarchical school — is that it separates
on principle the economic sphere from the moral. The defect
of socialism is that it more or less confuses or wrongly identifies
these two distinct, though indivisible, spheres.

II

All practical affirmation of a thing apart from its due
connection or correlation with everything else is essentially

328 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

immoral. To affirm a particular, conditional, and relative
activity as a thing by itself, as absolutely independent and self-
contained, is wrong in theory and immoral in practice, and can
lead to nothing but disaster and sin.

To regard man as merely an economic agent — a producer,
owner, and consumer of material goods — is a wrong and immoral
point of view. These functions have in themselves no significance
for man, and do not in any way express his essential nature and
worth. Productive labour, possession and enjoyment of its
results, is one of the aspects of human life or one of the spheres
of human activity. The truly human interest lies only in the
fact as to how and with what object man acts in this particular
domain. Free play of chemical processes can only take place in
a corpse ; in a living body these processes are connected and
determined by organic purposes. Similarly, free play of economic
factors and laws is only possible in a community that is dead
and is decomposing, while in a living community that has a
future, economic elements are correlated with and determined
by moral ends. To proclaim laissez faire^ taissez passer is to say
to society 'die and decompose.'

No doubt economic relations as a whole are based upon
a simple and ultimate fact, which cannot as such be deduced
from the moral principle — the fact, namely, that work, labour,
is necessary to the maintenance of life. There has never
been, however, a stage in the life of humanity at which this
material necessity was not complicated by moral considerations
— not even at the very lowest -stage. Necessity compels the
half-brutal savage to procure means of livelihood \ but in doing
so he may either think of himself alone or include in his need
the need of his mate and his young. If the hunt has been
unsuccessful he can either share his scarce booty with them,
hardly satisfying his own hunger, or can take everything for
himself, leaving them to fare as best they can ; or, finally, he
may kill them so as to satisfy his hunger with their flesh.
Whichever course he adopts, even the most orthodox devotee
of political economy would not be likely to ascribe his action to
the effect of inexorable economic ' laws.'

The necessity to work in order to obtain the means of liveli
hood is indeed a matter of fate and is independent of human will.

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 329

But it is merely an impetus which spurs man to activity, the
further course of that activity being determined by psychological
and moral, and not by economic, causes. When social structure
becomes somewhat more complex, not only the distribution of
the products of labour and the manner of enjoying them, or
* consumption,' but the labour itself is determined by motives
other than those of physical need — motives which have no element
of compulsion or natural necessity about them. It is sufficient to
name as an instance the most prevalent among them — the greed
for acquisition and the thirst for pleasure. There is no economic
law which determines the degree of cupidity or voluptuousness for
all men, and there is indeed no law that these passions should be
necessarily inherent in man at all, as inevitable motives of his
actions. Therefore in so far as economic activities and relations
are determined by these mental propensities they do not belong to
the domain of economics and do not obey any * economic laws '
with necessity.

Take the most elementary and the least disputable of these
so-called laws, namely, the law that the price of goods is deter
mined by the relation between supply and demand. This means
that the more demand there is for a particular article and the less
there is of it, the more it costs — and vice versa.

Suppose, however, that a rich but benevolent trader who has
a constant supply of some article of the first necessity decides, in
spite of the increased demand for that article, not to raise his prices
or even decides to lower them for the good of his needy neigh
bours. This will be a violation of the supposed economic 'law,'
and yet, however unusual the case may be, certainly no one would
think it impossible or supernatural.

Let us grant that if everything depended upon the good will of
private individuals, we might, in the domain of economics, regard
magnanimous motives as a negligible quantity, and build every
thing upon the secure foundation of self-interest. Every society,
however, has a central government, a necessary function of which
is to limit private cupidity. There are a good many historical
instances in which the state made the habitual and — from the
point of view of self-interest — the natural order of things un
natural and unusual, sometimes indeed rendering it altogether
impossible, and transforming the former exceptions into a universal

330 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

rule. Thus, for instance, in Russia for two and a half centuries
landowners who set all their serfs free and, in doing so, gave
them land were the most rare and extraordinary exception,
the usual order or ' law ' of relations between the landed gentry
and the peasants being that the latter, together with the land on
which they lived, were the property of the former. But with
remarkable completeness and rapidity this universal law was, by
the good will of the government, made illegal and impossible in
practice, while the former rare exceptions were transformed into
an absolutely binding rule, admitting of no exception at all.
Similarly, the exceptional case of the tradesman who does not put
up the price of the articles of first necessity with the increase in
demand, becomes a universal rule as soon as the government
deems it necessary to regulate the price of goods. In that case
this direct violation of the supposed c law ' actually becomes law,
— not a 'natural ' one, but positive law or law of the state.

It should be noted that notwithstanding the difference between
the two conceptions of the law of nature and the man-made law
of the state, the latter resembles the former in that within the
sphere of its application it has a universal force and admits of no
unforeseen exception.1 But the alleged economic laws never
have such a significance and can at any moment be freely violated
and annulled by the moral will of man. In virtue of the law of
1 86 1 not a single landowner in Russia may buy or sell peasants
otherwise than in his dreams. On the other hand, in spite of
the 4 law ' of supply and demand, nothing prevents any virtuous
Petersburg landlord, even when fully awake, from lowering the
rent of his flats out of philanthropic motives. The fact that only
a very few take the opportunity of doing so, proves not the power
of the economic factors, but the weakness of individual virtue.
For as soon as this lack of personal benevolence is supplanted by
the demand of the law of the state, rents will be immediately
lowered, and the ' iron ' necessity of economic laws will at once
prove to be as fragile as glass. This self-evident truth is at the
present time admitted by writers altogether foreign to socialism,
such as Laveleye, for instance. In earlier days, J. S. Mill, anxious
to preserve to political economy the character of an exact science

1 Direct violation of the law by the evil will is foreseen by the law itself and is
treated as a crime which calls forth a corresponding punishment.

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 331

and at the same time to avoid too obvious a contradiction with
reality, invented the following compromise. Admitting that the
economic distribution of the products of labour depends upon the
human will and may be subordinated to moral purposes, he in
sisted that the production is entirely determined by economic laws
which have in this case the force of the laws of nature — as if
production did not take place in the same general conditions and
depend upon the same human powers and agents as distribution !
This anti-scientific and scholastic distinction met, indeed, with
no success, and was equally rejected by both opposed camps which
Mill had sought to reconcile by means of it.

Freedom of the individual and society from the supposed
natural laws of the materially-economic order stands, of course, in
no immediate connection with the metaphysical question of free
will. When I say, e.g.^ that Petersburg landlords are free from
the supposed law which determines the price by the relation of
supply and demand, I am far from maintaining that any one of
these landlords whatever his character may be can at any given
moment lower the rent of his flats in spite of the increased demand
for them. I only urge the obvious truth that given a sufficiently
strong moral impulse, no alleged economic necessity can prevent
the individual, especially in his public capacity, from subordinating
material considerations to the moral in this or in that instance.
Hence it logically follows that in the realm of economics there
exist no natural laws acting independently of the individual will
of the given agents. I do not deny the presence of law in human
activity ; I only argue against a special kind of materially-economic
necessity invented a hundred years ago, and taken to be inde
pendent of the general conditions that determine volition through
psychological and moral motives. The character of objects and
events which fall within the province of economics is on the one
hand due to physical nature, and is therefore subject to material
necessity (to the mechanical, chemical, and biological laws), and
on the other hand is determined by human activity, which is subject
to the moral and psychological necessity. And since no further
causality, in addition to the natural and the human, can be found
in the phenomena of the economic order, it follows that there can
be in that domain no independent necessity and uniformity of
its own.

332 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

It has been pointed out that the lack of moral initiative in
private individuals is successfully supplemented by state legislation,
which regulates economic relations in the moral sense with a view
to the common good. Reference to this fact does not prejudge the
question as to the extent to which such regulation may be desirable
in the future and as to the form it should take. Of one thing
only there can be no doubt : the very fact of state interference
in the domain of economics (e.g. the legislative regulation of prices)
unmistakably proves that the given economic relations do not
express any natural necessity. For it is clear that laws of nature
could not be cancelled by laws of the state.

Ill

Subordination of material interests and relations in human
society to some special economic laws acting on their own account
is the fiction of a bad metaphysic, and has not the least foundation
in reality. Therefore the general demand of reason and con
science remains in force — the demand, namely, that this province
too should be subordinated to the supreme principle of morality,
and that in its economic life society should be the organised
realisation of the good.

There are not and there cannot be any independent economic
laws, any economic necessity, for economic phenomena can only
be thought of as activities of man who is a moral being, and is
capable of subordinating all his actions to the pure idea of the
good. There is only one absolute and independent law for man
as such — the moral law, and only one necessity, namely, the moral.
The peculiarity and independence of the economic sphere of rela
tions lies, not in the fact that it has ultimate laws of its own, but
in the fact that from its very nature it presents a special and pecu
liar field for the application of the one moral law. Thus earth
differs from other planets, not by having an independent source of
light all to itself, but by receiving and reflecting the one universal
light of the sun in a special and definite way, dependent upon its
place in the solar system.

This truth is fatal both to the theories of the orthodox
economists and to the socialist doctrine which seems at first sight
to be opposed to them. When the socialists denounce the exist-

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 333

ing economic system and declaim against the unequal distribution
of property, the cupidity and callousness of the rich, they appear
to adopt the moral point of view, and to be inspired by the good
feeling of pity towards those who labour and are heavy laden.
The positive side of their doctrine, however, clearly shows that
they take up, to begin with, an ambiguous and, subsequently, a
directly hostile attitude to the moral principle.

The inmost essence of socialism has for the first time found
expression in the remarkable doctrine of the followers of St.
Simon, who proclaimed as their motto the rehabilitation of
matter in the life of humanity. There is no doubt that matter
has its rights, and the less they are respected in principle the
more they assert themselves in practice. The nature of these
rights, however, may be interpreted in two different and, indeed,
directly contradictory ways. According to the first meaning — a
perfectly true and an extremely important one — the sphere of
material relations (more immediately of the economic ones) has a
right to become the object of man's moral activity. It has a
right to have the supreme spiritual principle realised or incarnate
in it — matter has a right to be spiritualised. It would be unjust
to maintain that this meaning was entirely foreign to the early
socialistic systems. But they did not dwell upon it or develop
it, and very soon this glimmer of a higher consciousness proved
to be merely a deceptive light over the quagmire of carnal passions
which gradually sucked in so many noble and inspired minds.

The other and more prevalent meaning given to the principle
of the rehabilitation of matter justifies the degradation of the St.
Simonists, and indeed makes it into a principle. The material life
of humanity is not regarded as merely a special province of human
activity or of the application of the moral principles. It is said
to have an entirely independent material principle of its own,
existing in its own right both in and for man, namely, the
principle of instinct or passion. This element must be given
full scope so that the normal social order should naturally follow
from personal passions and interests supplementing and replacing
one another (Fourier's fundamental conception). This 'normal'
order neither need nor can be moral. Alienation from the higher
spiritual interests becomes inevitable as soon as the material
side of human life is recognised to have an independent and

334 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

unconditional value. One cannot serve two masters ; and social
ism naturally gives predominance to the principle under the banner
of which the whole movement had first originated, i.e. to the
material principle. The domain of economic relations is entirely
subordinated to it, and is recognised as the chief, the fundamental,
the only real and decisive factor in the life of humanity. At this
point the inner opposition between socialism and the bourgeois
political economy disappears.

In truth, the morally abnormal condition of the civilised world
at the present day is due, not to this or that particular institution,
but to the general conception and trend of life in modern society.
Material wealth is becoming all-important, and social structure
itself is distinctly degenerating into a plutocracy. It is not
personal and hereditary property, division of labour and capital,
or inequality of material possessions that is immoral. What is
immoral is plutocracy, which distorts the true social order, raising
the lower and the essentially subservient factor — the economic
one — to the supreme and dominant position, and relegating all
other things to be the means and instruments of material gain.
Socialism leads to a similar distortion, though in a different way.
From the plutocratic point of view the normal man is in the first
place a capitalist and then, per accidens^ a citizen, head of a family,
an educated man, member of some religious union, etc. Similarly
from the socialist point of view all other interests become in
significant and retreat into the background — if they don't disappear
altogether — before the economic interest. In socialism, too, the
essentially lower, material sphere of life — the industrial activity
— becomes decidedly predominant and overshadows all else. Even
in its most idealistic forms socialism has from the first insisted
that the moral perfection of society wholly and directly depends
upon its economic structure, and sought to attain moral reforma
tion or regeneration exclusively by means of an economic revolu
tion. This fact clearly shows that socialism really stands on the
same ground as the bourgeois regime hostile to it, namely, the
supremacy of the material interest. Both have the same motto :
1 man liveth by bread alone.' For a plutocrat the worth ot man
depends upon his possessing or being capable of acquiring material
wealth. For a consistent socialist the worth of man depends upon
his producing material wealth. In both cases man is taken as an

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 335

economic agent, apart from other aspects of his being. In
both cases economic welfare is taken to be the final end and
the highest good. The struggle between the two hostile camps
is not one of principle ; or, rather, the struggle is waged, not about
the content of a principle, but only about the extent of its realisa
tion. One party is concerned with the material welfare of the
capitalist minority, and the other with the also material welfare of
the labour majority. And in so far as that majority, the working
classes themselves, begin to care exclusively about their material
welfare they obviously prove to be as selfish as their adversaries,
and lose all moral advantage over the latter. In certain respects
indeed socialism applies the principle of material interest more
fully and consistently than its opponents. Although plutocracy
really cares for the economic interest alone, it admits the existence,
though in a subordinate sense only, of other spheres of life, with
independent institutions — such as the state and the Church — cor
responding to them. Socialism in its pure form, however, rejects
all this. For it man is exclusively a producer and consumer, and
human society is merely an economic union— a union of work
men proprietors involving no substantial distinctions. And
since the predominance of the material interests — of the economic,
industrial and financial elements — constitutes the character
istic feature of the bourgeois regime, consistent socialism which
intends finally to limit the life of humanity to these lower in
terests alone is certainly not an antithesis to, but the extreme ex
pression, the crowning stage of the one-sided bourgeois civilisation.
Socialists and their apparent opponents — the plutocrats — un
consciously join hands on the most essential point. Plutocracy
subjugates the masses of the people to its own selfish interests,
disposes of them to its own advantage, for it regards them merely
as labour, as producers of material wealth. Socialism protests
against such 'exploiting,' but its protest is superficial and is
not based upon principles, since socialism itself in the long-run
regards man as merely (or in any case as mainly and primarily) an
economic agent — and if he is only that, there is no inherent reason
why he should not be exploited. On the other hand, the exclus
ive importance which attaches to material wealth, in the com
mercial state of the present day, naturally leads those who directly
produce this wealth, the working classes, to demand an equal

336 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

share in the enjoyment of the goods which, but for them, could
not exist and which they are brought up to regard as the chief
thing in life. Thus the practical materialism of the ruling classes
themselves calls forth and justifies socialistic tendencies in the
subjugated working classes. And when fear of social revolution
brings about an insincere conversion of the plutocrats to the ideal
istic principles, it proves to be a useless game. The masks of
morality and religion hastily put on do not deceive the masses,
who know perfectly well what the true worship of their masters
is.1 And having learnt this cult from their superiors, working
people naturally want to be the priests and not the victims.

The two hostile parties mutually presuppose one another and
cannot escape from the vicious circle until they acknowledge and
adopt in practice the unquestionable truth, forgotten by them,
that the significance of man, and therefore of human society, is
not essentially determined by economic relations, that man is not
primarily the producer of material goods or market values, but is
something infinitely more important, and that consequently society,
too, is more than an economic union.2

IV

For the true solution of the so-called 'social question ' it must
in the first place be recognised that the economic relations con
tain no special norm of their own, but are subject to the universal
moral norm as a special realm in which it finds its application.
The triple moral principle which determines our due relation to
wards God, men, and the material nature is wholly and entirely

1 A remarkably characteristic specimen of plutocratic hypocrisy is an article by the
well-known Jules Simon (now deceased) which appeared some years ago without
attracting notice. The article deals with the three chief evils of modern society : the
decline of religion, of family, and of ... rentes \ The treatment of religion and family
is dull and vague, but the lines dealing with the fall of interest on capital (from 4 per
cent to z% per cent, if I remember rightly) are written with the blood of the heart.

2 The contention that socialism and plutocracy are based upon one and the same
materialistic principle was put forward by me eighteen years ago (in chapter xiv. of the
Kritika oPvletchonnih natchal (Critique of Abstract Principles], first published in the Russky
Viestnik in 1878) and led my critics to accuse me of having a wrong conception of
socialism and of misjudging its value. I need no longer answer these criticisms, for
they have been brilliantly disproved by the history of the socialistic movement itself,
the main current of which has decidedly evinced itself as economic materialism.

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 337

applicable in the domain of economics. The peculiar character of
the economic relations gives a special importance to the last member
of the moral trinity, namely, the relation to the material nature
or earth (in the wide sense of the term). This third relation can
only have a moral character if it is not isolated from the first two
but is conditioned by them in their normal position.

The realm of economic relations is exhaustively described by
the general ideas of production (labour and capital), distribution of
property, and exchange of values. Let us consider these funda
mental ideas from the moral point of view, beginning with the
most fundamental of them — the idea of labour. We know that
the first impulse to labour is given by the material necessity.
But for a man who recognises above himself the absolutely
perfect principle of reality, or the will of God, all necessity is an
expression of that will. From this point of view labour is a
commandment of God. This commandment requires us to
work hard ( c in the sweat of thy face ' ) to cultivate the
ground, i.e. to perfect material nature. For whose sake ? In
the first place for our own and that of our neighbours. This
answer, clear at the most elementary stages of moral develop
ment, no doubt remains in force as humanity progresses, the
only change being that the denotation of the term ' neighbour '
becomes more and more wide. Originally my neighbours were
only those to whom I was related by the blood tie or by personal
feeling ; finally it is all mankind. When Bastiat, the most
gifted representative of economic individualism, advocated the
principle * each for himself he defended himself against the charge
of selfishness by pointing to the economic harmony in virtue of
which each man in working solely for himself (and his family),
unconsciously, from the very nature of social relations, works
also for. the benefit of all, so that the interest of each harmonises
in truth with the interest of all. In any case, however, this
would be merely a natural harmony, similar to that which
obtains in the non-human world where certain insects, seeking
nothing but sweet food for themselves, unconsciously bring
about the fertilisation of plants by transferring the pollen from
one flower to another. Such harmony testifies, of course, to the
wisdom of the Creator, but does not make insects into moral
beings. Man, however, is a moral being and natural solidarity

z

338 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

is not sufficient for him ; he ought not merely to labour for all
and participate in the common work, but to know that he does
so and to wish to do it. Those who refuse to recognise this
truth as a matter of principle will feel its force as a fact in
financial smashes and economic crises. Men who are the
cause of such anomalies and men who are the victims of them,
both belong to the class of people who work for themselves,
and yet the natural harmony neither reconciles their interests
nor secures their prosperity. The merely natural unity of
economic interests is not sufficient to secure the result that
each, in working for himself, should also work for all. To
bring this about economic relations must be consciously directed
towards the common good.

To take selfishness or self-interest as the fundamental motive
of labour means to deprive labour of the significance of a
universal commandment, to make it into something accidental.
If I work solely for the sake of my own and my family's welfare,
then as soon as I am able to attain that welfare by other means I
must lose my only motive for work. And if it were proved that a
whole class or group of persons can prosper by means of robbery,
fraud, and exploitation of other people's labour, no theoretically
valid objection could be urged against this from the point of view
of unrestrained self-interest. Is it for the natural harmony
of interests to abolish such abuses ? But where was the natural
harmony in the long ages of slavery, feudalism, serfdom ? Or
perhaps the fierce intestine wars which abolished feudalism in
Europe and slavery in America were the expression — though
somewhat a belated one — of natural Harmony ? In that case
it is difficult to see in what way such harmony differs from
disharmony, and in what way the freedom of the guillotine is
better than the restrictions of state socialism. If, however,
natural harmony of interests, seriously understood, proves to be
powerless against economic abuses due to the unrestrained
selfishness of individuals and classes whose freedom in this
respect has to be restricted in the name of higher justice, it is
unfair and unpermissible to appeal to justice in the last resort only,
and to put it at the end and not at the beginning of social
structure. In addition to being unfair and unpermissible it
is also quite useless. For such morality ex machina has no

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 339

power to attract or to inspire. No one will believe in it or be
restrained by it from anything, and the only thing left will be
bare compulsion — one day in one direction, and the next in
another.

When the principle of the individualistic freedom of interests
is adopted by the strong, it does not make them work more but
gives rise to the slavery of ancient times, to the seigniorial right of
the Middle Ages, and to modern economic slavery or plutocracy.
When adopted by the weak, who, however, are strong as the
majority, as the masses, this principle of unrestrained selfishness
does not make them more united in their work, but merely creates
an atmosphere of envious discontent, which produces in the end the
bombs of the anarchists. Had Bastiat, who was fond of expressing
his ideas in the form of popular dialogues, lived to our day, he
might have played the chief part in the following conversation :

Anarchist. Out of especial friendliness for you, Mr. Bastiat, I
warn you take yourself away from here, as far as ever you can —
I am just going to blow up all this neighbourhood, for there are
lots of tyrants and exploiters about.

Bastiat. What a terrible position ! But consider : you are
doing irreparable damage to the principle of human liberty !

Anarchist. On the contrary — we are putting it into practice.

Bastiat. Who has put these devilish ideas into your mind ?

Anarchist. You yourself.

Bastiat. What an absurd slander !

Anarchist. It is perfectly true. We are your pupils. Have
you not proved that the root of all evil is the interference of
public authority with the free play of individual interests ? Have
you not ruthlessly condemned all intentional organisation of
labour, all compulsory social order ? And that which is con
demned as evil must be destroyed. We translate your words into
practice and are saving you from dirty work.

Bastiat. I struggled only against the interference of the state
in the economic life, and against the artificial organisation of labour
advocated by socialists.

Anarchist. Socialists are no concern of ours j if they are
deluded by fancies, so much the worse for them. We are not
deluded. We fight against one organisation only — one which
really exists and is called social order. Towns and factories, stock

340 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

exchanges and academies, administration, police, army, Church
— all these did not spring from the ground of themselves j they
are the product of artificial organisation. Therefore on your own
premisses they are an evil and ought to be destroyed.

Eastlat. Even if this were true, things ought not to be
destroyed by violent and disastrous means.

Anarchist. What is disaster ? You have yourself beautifully
explained that apparent calamities lead to the real good of all, and
you have always very subtly distinguished between the unim
portant things that are evident and the important that cannot be
seen. In the present case what is evident are the flying sardine
boxes, demolished buildings, disfigured corpses — this is evident
but unimportant. And that which is not seen and which alone is
important is the future humanity which will be free from all
' interference ' and all c organisation ' — since the persons, classes,
and institutions which might interfere and organise will be ex
terminated. You preached the principle of anarchy, we carry
out anarchy in practice.

Bastiat. Policeman ! policeman ! seize him quick before he
blows us up. What are you thinking about ?

Policeman. Well, I was wondering whether, from the point
of view of self-interest, which I too have adopted after reading
your eloquent arguments, it is of more advantage to me to seize
this fellow by the scruff" of the neck or to make haste and establish
a natural harmony of interests between us.

V

In opposition to the alleged economic harmony, facts compel
us to admit that starting with private material interest as the
purpose of labour we arrive at universal discord and destruction
instead of universal happiness. If, however, the principle and the
purpose of labour is found in the idea of the common good, under
stood in the true moral sense — i.e. as the good of all and each and
not of the majority only — that idea will also contain the satisfaction
of every private interest within proper limits.

From the moral point of view every man, whether he be an
agricultural labourer, a writer, or a banker, ought to work with
a feeling that his work is useful to all, and with a desire for it

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 341

to be so ; he ought to regard it as a duty, as a fulfilment of the
law of God and a service to the universal welfare of his fellow-men.
But just because this duty is universal, it presupposes that every
one else must regard the person in question in the same way, i.e.
to treat him not as a means only but as an end or purpose of the
activity of all. The duty of society is to recognise and to secure
to each of its members the right to enjoy unmolested worthy human
existence both for himself and his family. Worthy existence is
compatible with voluntary poverty, such as St. Francis preached
and as is practised by our wandering pilgrims ; but it is incompatible
with work which reduces all the significance of man to being
simply a means for producing or transferring material wealth.
Here are some instances.

" We watch the kriuchniks at work : the poor half-naked Tatars
strain every nerve. It is painful to see the bent back flatten out
all of a sudden under a weight of eight to eighteen puds1 (the
last figure is not exaggerated). This terrible work is paid at the
rate of five roubles per thousand puds.2 The most a kriuchnik
can earn in the twenty-four hours is one rouble, and that if he
works like an ox and overstrains himself. Few can endure more
than ten years of such labour, and the two-legged beasts of burden
become deformed or paralytic " (Novoe Vremya^ N. 7356). Those
who have not seen the Volga kriuchniks are sure to have seen the
porters in big hotels who, breathless and exhausted, drag to the
fourth or fifth floor boxes weighing several hundredweight. And
this in our age of machines and all sorts of contrivances ! No one
seems to be struck by the obvious absurdity. A visitor arrives at
an hotel with luggage. To walk up the stairs would be a useful
exercise for him, but instead he gets into a lift, while his things,
for which, one would have thought, the lift was expressly meant,
are loaded on the back of the porter, who thus proves to be not
even an instrument of another man but an instrument of his
things — the means of a means !

Labour which is exclusively and crudely mechanical and in
volves too great a strain of the muscular force is incompatible with
human dignity. But equally incompatible with it and equally
immoral is work which, though in itself not heavy or degrading,
lasts all day long and takes up all the time and all the forces of

1 2^ cwt. and 5f cwt. 2 16^ tons.

342 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the person, so that the few hours of leisure are necessarily devoted
to physical rest, and neither time nor energy is left for thoughts
and interests of the ideal or spiritual order.1 In addition to hours
of leisure, there are, of course, entire days of rest — Sundays and
other holidays. But the exhausting and stupefying physical work
of the week produces in holiday time a natural reaction — a craving
to plunge into dissipation and to forget oneself, and the days of
rest are devoted to the satisfaction of that craving.

"Let us not, however, dwell on the impression which individual
facts susceptible of observation produce upon us, even though
such facts be numerous. Let us turn to statistics and inquire as
to how far wages satisfy the necessary wants of the workers.
Leaving aside the rate of wages in the different industries, the
quality of food, the size of the dwelling, etc., we will only ask of
statistics the question as to the relation between the length of
human life and the occupation pursued. The answer is as follows :
Shoemakers live on the average to the age of 49 ; printers, 48.3 ;
tailors, 46.6 j joiners, 44.7; blacksmiths, 41.8; turners, 41.6;
masons, 33. And the average length of life of civil servants,
capitalists, clergymen, wholesale merchants, is 60-69 years-2 Now
take the figures referring to the death-rate in relation to the size of
the dwellings and the amount of rent in the different parts of
town. It will be seen that in parts of the town with a poor popula
tion, belonging chiefly to the working class and paying low rents,
mortality is far higher than in the neighbourhood with a relatively
larger number of rich people. For Paris this relation was estab
lished by Villarme' as early as the 'twenties of the present century.
He calculated that during the five years from 1822 to 1826, in
the II. arrondissement of Paris, where the average rent per flat
was 605 francs, there was one death per 71 inhabitants, while in
the arrondissement XII., where the average rent was 148 francs,
there was one death per 44 inhabitants. Similar data are to hand
for many other towns, Petersburg among them.3 Hence the
following true conclusion is deduced : c If a workman is not

1 Tram conductors in Petersburg work more than eighteen hours a day for twenty-
five or thirty roubles a month (see No-vac Vremya, N. 7357).

2 The author quoted refers here to Hanshofer's book, Lehrbuch der Statistik. All
the figures quoted are apparently for the countries of Western Europe.

8 A. A. Isaev, Natchala polititcheskoi economii (Principles of Political Economy), 2nd
ed. pp. 254-255.

343

regarded as a means of production, but is recognised, like every
other human being, to be a free agent and an end in himself, the
average forty years of life cannot be regarded as normal, while
men belonging to richer classes live on the average till sixty or
seventy years. This life, the longest possible under the social
conditions of the present day, must be regarded as normal. All
deviation below this average, . unless it can be ascribed to the
peculiarities of the particular work in question, must be entirely
put down to excessive labour and insufficient income which does
not allow to satisfy the most essential needs and the minimum
demands of hygiene with regard to food, clothing, and housing.1

The absolute value of man is based, as we know, upon the
possibility inherent in his reason and his will of infinitely approach
ing perfection or, according to the patristic expression, the
possibility of becoming divine (floocris). This possibility does not
pass into actuality completely and immediately, for if it did man
would be already equal to God — which is not the case. The
inner potentiality becomes more and more actual, and can only do
so under definite real conditions. If an ordinary man is left for
many years on an uninhabited island or in strict solitary confine
ment he cannot improve morally or intellectually, and indeed, ex
hibits rapid and obvious regress towards the brutal stage. Strictly
speaking, the same is true of a man wholly absorbed in physical
labour. Even if he does not deteriorate he is certainly unable to
think of actively realising his highest significance as man. The
moral point of view demands, then, that every one should have the
means of existence (e.g. clothes and a warm and airy dwelling) and
sufficient physical rest secured to him, and that he should also be
able to enjoy leisure for the sake of his spiritual development.
This and this alone is absolutely essential for every peasant and
workman ; anything above this is from the evil one.

Those who are opposed to improving the social and economic
relations in accordance with the demands of morality urge the
following consideration. They maintain that the only way in
which the working people can, in addition to a secured material
existence, have leisure to pursue their moral and intellectual de
velopment, is by reducing the number of hours of work, without

1 A. A. Isaev, Natchala folititcfieskoi economii (Principles of Political Economy), 2nd
ed. p. 226.

344 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

reducing the wages. And this, they argue, will lead to a decrease
of output, i.e. to economic loss or regress. Let it be provisionally
granted that shorter hours of work with no reduction in wages
will indeed inevitably lead to a diminution in productiveness.
But a temporary diminution of output does not necessarily mean
regress or loss. When the hours of work have been reduced to
a certain norm, positive reasons conditioning the increase of pro
ductiveness will continue to operate. Such causes are to be
found in technical improvements, greater proximity between
different districts and countries owing to new means of com
munication, a closer intercourse between the different classes —
causes all of which are wholly or partly independent of wages
and hours of work. Thus the general quantity of output will
again begin to increase j and even at the time when the increase
will not yet have attained the former level, production of the
objects of first necessity for individuals and the state will obviously
not be decreased at all, and the decrease will entirely affect objects
of luxury. It will be no great hardship to society if gold watches,
satin skirts, and velvet chairs become twice or even three times as
dear as they are now. It may be said that shorter hours of work
with the same pay means a direct loss to the factory owners.
It is impossible, however, to do anything without loss to some
one or other ; and it could hardly be called a calamity or an in
justice if certain manufacturers were to get half a million instead
of a million, or fifty instead of a hundred thousand dividend.
This social class, no doubt an important and necessary one, does
not inevitably consist of avaricious, greedy, and selfish men. I
know several capitalists entirely free from these vices ; and those of
them who are not have a right to demand that society should pity
them and not condone their abnormal and dangerous state of mind.
The hackneyed philippics, prompted by low envy, that socialists
indulge in against the rich are perfectly sickening ; demands for
equalisation of property are unreasonable to the point of absurdity.1
But it is one thing to attack private wealth as though that in

1 The diametrical opposition between socialism and Christianity has often been
noted, but the essence of it is generally wrongly understood. The popular saying that
socialism demands that the poor should take from the rich, while Christianity wants
the rich to give to the poor, is more witty than profound. The opposition is far
deeper than this, and lies in the moral attitude towards the rich. Socialism en-vies them
and Christianity pities them — pities them because of the obstacles which connection

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 345

itself were an evil, and another — to demand that wealth, as a
relative good, should harmonise with the common good under
stood in the light of the unconditional moral principle. It is one
thing to strive for an impossible and unnecessary equalisation of
property, and another, while preserving the advantages of larger
property to those who have it, to recognise the right of every
one to the necessary means of worthy human existence.

Apart from the false conclusions which the opponents of the
moral regulation of economic relations deduce from their funda
mental assertion, they are wrong in that assertion itself. Regula
tion of the hours of work and of the amount of wages need not
necessarily curtail the production at all (not even of the articles
of luxury) or cause corresponding losses to the factory owners.
This would be the case if the quantity — not to speak of quality — of
the production entirely depended upon the number of hours ex
pended upon it. No thoughtful and conscientious economist
would, however, venture to maintain such a crying absurdity.
It is easy to see that a worker exhausted, dulled, and embittered
by excessive labour can produce in sixteen hours less than he can
produce in eight hours if he works zealously and cheerfully, with
a consciousness of his human dignity and a faith in his moral
connection with the society or the state which looks after his
interests instead of exploiting him. Thus a moral adjustment of
economic relations would at the same time make for economic
progress.

VI

In considering the organisation of human relations — in this
case, of the economic ones — moral philosophy is not concerned
with the concrete particular forms and determinations. These
are dictated by life itself, and find realisation through the work of
specialists and of men endowed with authority — men of theory
and men of practice. Moral philosophy is only concerned with
the immutable conditions which follow from the very nature of the

with Mammon puts in the way of moral perfection : it is hard for the rich to enter the
kingdom of heaven. But socialism takes that kingdom itself — i.e. the highest good
and blessedness — to consist in nothing other than wealth, provided it is differently dis
tributed. That which for Christianity is an obstacle, for socialism is an end ; if this
is not an antithesis I do not know what else to call by that name.

346 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

good, and apart from which no concrete organisation could be
moral. From the ethical point of view every social organisation
is valuable and desirable only in so far as it embodies the moral
principle, only in so far as it justifies the good. To make projects or
prophecies is not the business of philosophy. It can neither offer
definite plans of social organisation, nor even know whether indi
viduals and nations will seek to adjust their relations according to
the demands of the absolute moral principle at all. Its problem is
as clear and as independent of any external circumstances as the
problems of pure mathematics. Under what conditions is a
fragment of a three-sided prism equal to three pyramids ? Under
what conditions do social relations in a given sphere correspond
to the demands of the moral principle and ensure the stability and
the constant moral progress of a given community ?

We already know under what conditions social relations in
the domain of material labour become moral. The first general
condition is, that the sphere of economic activity should not be
isolated or affirmed as independent and self-contained. The
second, more special condition is that production should not be at
the expense of the human dignity of the producers ; that not
one of them should become merely a means of production, and
that each should have secured to him material means necessary
for worthy existence and development. The first demand has a
religious character : not to put Mammon in the place of God, not
to regard material wealth as an independent good, and the final
purpose of human activity,1 not even in the economic sphere.
The second is a demand of humane feeling : to pity those who
labour and are heavy laden, and not to set a lower value upon them
than upon soulless things. To these two a third condition is
necessarily added, which, so far as I am aware, has never yet been
insisted upon in this connection. I am referring to the duties
of man as an economic agent towards material nature itself,
which he is called upon to cultivate. This duty is directly indi
cated in the commandment of labour : Till the ground.2 To

1 The recognition of material wealth as the end of economic activity may be called
the original sin of political economy, since it dates back to Adam Smith.

2 The Hebrew words laobod ef gaadama (Gen. iii. 23) literally mean 'to serve the
earth ' — not, of course, to serve in the sense of a religious cult (although the word obod
is used in this sense also) but in the sense in which angels serve humanity or a teacher
serves the children, etc.

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 347

cultivate the ground means not to misuse, exhaust, or devastate it,
but to improve it, to bring it to greater power and fulness
of being. Neither our fellow-men nor material nature must
be a mere passive or impersonal instrument of economic pro
duction or exploitation. Taken in itself or in isolation it is
not the end of our activity, but it is a distinct and independent
part of that end. Its subordinate position in relation to the Deity
and humanity does not render it rightless : it has a right to our
help in transforming and uplifting it. Things are rightless, but
nature or earth is not merely a thing but an objectified essence,
which we can and therefore must help to become spiritualised.
The end of labour, so far as material nature is concerned, is not to
make it an instrument for obtaining things and money, but to
perfect it — to revive the lifeless, to spiritualise the material in it.
The methods whereby this can be achieved cannot be indicated
here ; they fall within the province of art (in the broad sense of
the Greek re^v^). But what is essential is the point of view, the
inner attitude and the direction of activity that results from it.
Without loving nature for Its own sake it is impossible to organise
material life in a moral way,

Man's relation to material nature may be of three kinds :
passive submission to it as it now exists ; active struggle with it,
its subjugation and the using of it as an indifferent instrument ;
and finally, the affirmation of it in its ideal state — of that which
it ought to become through man. The first relation is wholly un
just both to man and to nature — to man, because it deprives him
of his spiritual dignity by making him the slave of matter ; to
nature, because, in worshipping it in its present imperfect and per
verted condition, man deprives it of the hope of perfection. The
second, the negative relation to nature is relatively normal, as a
transitory and temporary stage ; for it is clear that in order to
make nature what it ought to be, we must first condemn it as it
is, as it ought not to be. But absolutely normal and final is of
course only the third, the positive relation, in which man uses his
superiority over nature for the sake of uplifting it as well as
of raising himself. It will be easily noted that man's threefold
relation to earthly nature is a repetition, though on a wider scale,
of his relation to his own material nature. Here, too, we neces
sarily distinguish the abnormal (passive) and the normal (positively

348 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

active) relation and the transition from the first to the second
(negatively active). The carnal man submits and surrenders him
self to the material life in its undue, perverted state. The ascetic
struggles with the flesh in order to conquer it. The perfect man,
having passed through such a struggle, does not destroy his bodily
life but attains to its transfiguration, resurrection, and ascension.
Asceticism or the subjugation of the flesh in individual life, struggle
with external earthly nature and the subjugation of it in the
common life of humanity, is merely a necessary transition and not
the ideal form of activity. The ideal is to cultivate the earth, to
minister to it, so that it might be renewed and regenerated.

VII

The efficient or producing cause of labour is found in the needs
of man. This cause holds good for all the factors of production
which appear now as the subjects and now as the objects of needs.
The worker, as a living being, has need of the means of liveli
hood, and, as labour, he is the object of need to the capitalist,
who in his turn, as employer, is an object of need to the worker,
and in this sense is the immediate efficient cause of his labour.
The same persons, as producers, stand in a similar relation to
consumers, etc.

The material (and instrumental) cause of labour and production
is found on the one hand in the forces of nature, and on the other
in the various faculties and forces of man. But these twofold
(efficient and material) economic causes, studied by political
economy and statistics from different points of view, are physically
unlimited and morally indefinite. The needs may increase in
number and complexity ad infinitum ; both needs and faculties
may be of different worth, and, finally, the forces of nature may
be used in the most various directions. All this leads to practical
questions to which political economy, as a science limited to the
material and existent aspect of things, can give no answer. Many
persons have a need of pornography. Should this need be satisfied
by the production of indecent books, pictures, immoral spectacles ?
Some demands, as well as some faculties, are obviously perverted
in character ; thus in the case of many persons certain positive
qualities of intellect and will degenerate into a peculiar capacity

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 349

for clever swindling within the limits of legality. Should we
allow this capacity to develop freely and become a special pro
fession or branch of work ? Political economy as such can
obviously answer nothing to questions such as these — they in
no wise concern it. They directly concern, however, the re
cognised interests of society which cannot confine itself to matters
of fact alone, but must submit them to a higher causality, by
drawing a distinction between the normal and abnormal needs
and faculties, the normal and abnormal use of the forces of nature.
Since the fact of the existence of needs on the one hand and
of forces and faculties on the other does not solve the practical
question as to the extent to which the first should be satisfied
and the manner in which the latter should be used, appeal has
to be made to the moral principle as determining that which
ought to be. It does not create the factors and elements of labour,
but indicates how those already in existence should be used.
Hence follows a new conception of labour, both more general
and more definite than that given by political economy as such.
For political economy labour is an activity of man ensuing from
his needs, conditioned by his faculties, applied to the forces of
nature, and having for its purpose the production of the greatest
possible wealth. From the moral point of view labour is interaction
between men in the material world ; it must, in accordance with the
moral demands, secure to each and all the necessary means of worthy
existence, enabling man to bring to perfection all his powers, and is
finally destined to transfigure and spiritualise material nature. Such
is the essence of labour from the point of view of the higher
causality — of the formal and final cause — apart from which the
two lower causes remain practically indefinite.

Further conditions of the normal economic life become clear
in analysing the conceptions of property and exchange.

VIII

All the acute questions of the economic life are closely con
nected with the idea of property, which in itself, however, belongs
to the sphere of jurisprudence, morality, and psychology rather
than to that of economic relations. This fact alone clearly

350 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

shows how mistaken is the attempt to conceive of the economic
phenomena as entirely independent and self-contained.

The ultimate basis of property, as all serious philosophers of
modern times rightly recognise, is to be found in the very nature
of man. Even in the contents of inner psychical experience we
necessarily distinguish ourselves from what is ours : all our thoughts,
feelings, desires, we regard as belonging to us, in contradistinction
to ourselves as thinking, feeling, desiring. The relation is two
fold. On the one hand, we necessarily put ourselves above what
is ours, for we recognise that our existence is not by any means
exhausted by or limited to any particular mental states — that
this thought, this desire may disappear while we ourselves remain.
This is the fundamental expression of human personality as
formally unconditional, quite apart from the metaphysical question
of the soul as substance. On the other hand, however, we are
aware that if we are deprived of all mental states altogether we
shall become a blank ; so that for the reality and fulness of being
it is insufficient to be 'oneself,' but it is necessary to have 'one's
own.' Even in the inner psychical sphere that which belongs
to the self is not always the absolute property of the person and
is not always connected with him to the same extent.

Some mental states express by their content in the most inti
mate, direct, and immediate way that which is essential and funda
mental to the given individual, and are in a sense inseparable from
him. Thus, for instance, when a person has an implicit steadfast
faith in God, such faith is his unalienable property — not in the sense
that he must always actually have in mind a positive thought of
God with corresponding thoughts and impulses, but only in the
sense that every time the idea of God actually arises in his mind,
or that he is faced with a question concerning God, a definite
positive answer accompanied by corresponding states of feeling
and will is bound to follow. Other mental states are, on the
contrary, merely superficial and transitory reactions of the person to
external influences — accidental both in contentand inorigin, though
conditioned by a more or less complex association of ideas and
other mental and bodily processes. Thus when a person happens
to think of the advantages or disadvantages of cycling, or to
wish for a drink of beer, or to feel indignation at some lie in
the newspapers, etc., it is obvious that such accidental states are

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 351

but feebly connected with the person to whom they belong,
that he loses nothing and experiences no essential change when
they disappear. Finally, some mental states cannot, apart from
their content and manner of origin, be regarded as reactions on
the part of the individual who experiences them at all, so that
their belonging to him must be recognised as fictitious. To
this category belong the suggested (hypnotically or otherwise)
ideas, desires and feelings, and actions ensuing therefrom. It
is very difficult to offer a theoretical account of them, but they
unquestionably exist. Without going into these exceptional
phenomena, however, it is sufficient to indicate the fact that
both in theory and in practice certain actions are not laid to the
responsibility of the persons who commit them. In view of the
circumstance that, for the most part, these actions are conditioned
by corresponding ideas, feelings, and impulses on the part of the
agent, the recognition that he is not responsible for them implies
that certain mental states do not belong to or form the property
of the person who experiences them.

Thus even in the sphere of the inner psychical life we find
that property is but relative and different in degree, beginning
with the 'treasure' in which man 'puts his very soul' and which
may nevertheless be taken from him, and ending with states
which prove to belong to him in an utterly fictitious sense.
Similar relativity obtains with regard to external property. The
immediate object of it is man's own body, which, however,
belongs to man only more or less. This is true, first, in the
natural sense that the individual himself cannot regard as equally
his own those organs or parts of the body without which earthly
life is altogether impossible (e.g. the head or the heart), those
without which it is possible but not enjoyable (e.g. ' the apple of
the eye'), and those the loss of which is no misfortune at all
(e.g. an amputated finger or an extracted tooth, not to speak of
nails, hair, etc.). If, however, the real connection of the person
with his body is thus relative and unequal, there is no natural
ground for regarding the body as his absolute property or as
absolutely inviolable. And from the point of view of the un
conditional moral principle the bodily inviolability of a person is
not anything distinct and on its own account, but is connected
with universal and generally binding norms, and is therefore

352 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

incompatible with the violation of these norms. If it is both my
right and my duty forcibly to prevent a man from injuring a
defenceless being, it must be the right and the duty of other
persons to exercise such bodily compulsion over myself too in a
similar case.

If, on the other hand, property is understood in the strict
sense as the cjus utendi and abutendi re sua' (the right to use
and to abuse of one's own thing), such a right is not absolute so
far as one's body is concerned. On this side too it is limited by
just considerations of the common good which have found
expression in legal codes of all epochs and nations. If the whole
of man's physical powers are needed, for instance, for the defence
of his country, even so slight an ' abuse ' of one's body as cutting
off a finger is recognised as criminal. And even apart from such
special conditions, not by any means every use that man may
make of his body is regarded as permissible.

But whatever the moral and social limitations of man's rights
over his own body may be, in any case it unquestionably belongs to
him, just as his mental states do, in virtue of a direct and natural
connection, independent of his will, between himself and what is
his. As to external things, the ground upon which they belong
to this or that person, or are appropriated by him, is not im
mediately given and calls for explanation. Even when there
appears to be the closest connection between a person and a
thing, as for instance between necessary clothing and the person
who is wearing it, the question as to property still remains open,
for the clothes may not be his own but may have been stolen
from somebody else. On the other 'hand, a person living in
Petersburg or London may have immovable property in East
Siberia which he has never seen nor ever will see. If, then, the
presence of the closest real connection between a person and a
thing (as in the first case) is in no sense a guarantee of property,
while the absence of any real connection (as in the second
instance) is no obstacle to property, it follows that the real
connection is altogether irrelevant and that the right of property
must have an ideal basis. According to a current philosophical
definition, property is the ideal continuation of the person in
things or the extension of the person to things. In what way,
however, and upon what ground is the self thus extended to

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 353

what is other than it and appropriates that other ? Such extension
cannot be due to the act of personal will alone ; an act of will
can transfer the already existing right of property (through gift
or legacy, etc.), but it cannot create the right itself. The right
of property is usually held to arise in two ways only, through
possession and rwork. Possession in the strict sense, i.e. apart
from any special work (such as the military), through simple
seizure resulting from a direct act of will gives rise to a special
right of property, ' the right of the first occupier ' (ljus primi
occupantis '), but does so only in exceptional cases, more and
more rarely met with, when that which is seized belongs to no
one ( c res nullius ' ).

Work thus remains, in the general opinion, the essential basis
of property. The product of one's work and effort naturally
becomes one's own, one's property. This ground, however, also
proves to be insecure. If it were sufficient, children would have
to be recognised as the property of the mother who brought
them into the world with no little labour and effort. Reservations
have to be made and human beings must be a priori excluded
from the class of objects of property ; and this can only be done in
virtue of principles utterly foreign to the economic sphere as
such. At this point, however, a new and more important
difficulty arises. It has been granted that things alone can be
objects of property, and that the ground of property is labour
which produces them. This would be all very well if labour
could produce things ; but in truth labour produces not things
but utility in things. Utility, however, is a relation and not a
thing and cannot therefore be the object of property. In common
parlance, dating from primitive times, it is usual to speak of
workmen making things ; but even persons ignorant of political
economy understand that workmen merely produce in the given
material changes which communicate to it some relatively new
qualities corresponding to certain human needs. There is no
doubt that they work for their own sake as well as for other
people's, and that their work must give satisfaction to their own
needs. "The workman is worthy of his meat,"1 — this is a
moral axiom which no one would honestly challenge. The
question, however, is what can be the ground of the workman's

1 'Meat' should, of course, be understood in the wide sense explained above.

2 A

354 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

ownership of the so-called products of labour. Labour which
does not produce a thing, but only a certain particular quality in
it, inseparable from the thing itself, cannot justify the ownership
of that which it did not produce, and which does not depend
upon it. The employer is responsible for the workman's labour
but not for the reality of its products, and is therefore in the
same position as the workman with regard to the latter.

Thus there exists no real ground why the product of labour
should be the property of any one, and we must therefore turn to
the ideal grounds.

IX

In virtue of the absolute significance of personality every man
has a right to the means of a worthy existence. Since, however,
the individual as such has this right potentially only, and it
depends upon society actually to realise or to secure it, it
follows that the individual has a corresponding duty towards
society — the duty to be useful to it or to work for the common
good. In this sense work is the source of property : the
worker has an unquestionable right of property over what he
has earned. Within certain limits demanded by the moral prin
ciple, wages may be regulated by society — i.e. by the central
authority or the Government — and not be allowed to fall
below a certain minimum, but they cannot be prescribed with
absolute exactness. On the other hand, the needs and the
conditions of a worthy existence are even in a normal society only
an approximately constant and definite quantity. Hence it
becomes possible for individual persons to save or to accumulate
material means, i.e. to form capital. There is, of course, still
less visible and real connection between capital and the person
who has saved it than there is between the workman and the
thing he has made, but the close and complete ideal connection
is obvious. Capital as such, in its general nature — apart from
the circumstances owing to which it may in individual cases have
been built up— is a pure product of human will, for originally it
depended upon that will to save a part of the earnings or to use
it too for current needs. Capital, therefore, ought in justice to
be recognised as property par excellence}-

1 I have indicated the source of capital in the simplest normal scheme. But

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 355

The conception of property involves the conception of freely
disposing of the object of property. Ought this freedom to be
absolute and include both the use and the abuse of property ?
Since the realisation of any right at all is only possible if society
guarantees it, there is no reason why society should guarantee
personal misuse of a right that conflicts with the common good.
From the fact that, according to the moral principle, the
individual has absolute and inalienable rights, it by no means
follows that every act of his will is the expression of such an
inalienable right. Apart from being irrational such a supposition
would be practically self-destructive, since a will which trespasses
upon all rights would also in that case be inviolable, and there
fore there would be no inalienable right left. And if it is both
permissible and obligatory to prevent a person from misusing his
hands (for instance, from committing a murder), it is also
permissible and obligatory to prevent him from misusing his
property to the detriment of the common good or social justice.1

The only question is as to what we are to understand by
misuse that calls for the intervention of the state. Socialism
recognises as misuse all transfer of earned property to another
person by legacy or testament. This transference of economic
advantages to persons who have not personally deserved them is
alleged to be the main wrong and the source of all social evils.
But although inheritance of property has some real drawbacks,
they disappear in the face of the positive side of this institution,
which necessarily follows from the very nature of man. The
continuous chain of progress in humanity is kept together by
the conscious successiveness of its links. While the all-
embracing unity of the future is still in the making, the very

whatever anomalies may accompany the formation and growth of capital in actual
life, the part played by the will or the strength of spirit remains in any case essential.
Since there is no doubt that all wealth may be squandered, the mere fact of saving it
is an obvious merit of will on the part of the saver ; it is null in comparison with
merits of a different and higher order, but in their absence it undoubtedly has an
importance of its own.

1 Even Roman law, thoroughly individualistic as it was in this respect, introduced
an important reservation into the formula quoted above : proprietas est jus utendi et
abutendi re sua quatenus juris ratio patitur — property is the right to use and to abuse of
one's thing in so far as it is compatible with the meaning (or the rational basis) of
justice. But the meaning of justice demands precisely that private caprice should be
limited by the common good.

356 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

process whereby it comes about demands mutual moral dependence
between generations, in -virtue of which one does not merely
follow the other but also inherits from it. If it were not for
the intentional and voluntary handing down of what has been
acquired, we should have only a physical succession of generations,
the later repeating the life of the former, as is the case with
animals. The most important thing, of course, is the continuous
accumulation of spiritual inheritance ; but since it is only
given to a few to hand down to universal posterity permanent
spiritual acquisitions, and since moral demands are the same for
all, it is the right and the duty of the majority of men to try
and improve the material conditions of life for their immediate
successors. Those who wholly devote themselves to the service
of the universal future and already anticipate it as an ideal
have a right to refer to the precept of taking no thought for
the morrow advocated in the Gospels. To imitate the lilies
of the field one must be as pure as they are, and to be like
the fowls of the air one must be able to fly as high. But
if either purity or loftiness be lacking, practical carelessness
likens us not to the lilies or the birds of the air, but to the
animal which, careless of the future, grubs up the roots of the
kindly oak tree, and even, on occasion, devours its own offspring
instead of acorns.

When dealing with an institution which is not immoral and
is based upon ideal foundations though it corresponds only to
the medium level of morality, no serious moralist ought to
forget the unquestionable truth that it is far more difficult for
society to rise above this level than to sink below it. Even
if socialism and theories akin to it did intend to turn every
human being into an angel, they would certainly fail to do so; but
to bring the human mass down to the brutal stage is not at all
difficult. To reject in the name of the absolute moral ideal the
necessary social conditions of moral progress means, in the first
place, in defiance of logic, to confuse the absolute and eternal
value of that which is being realised with the relative value of the
degree of realisation as a process in time. Secondly, it means
a thoughtless attitude towards the absolute ideal which, apart
from the concrete conditions of its realisation, becomes for man
an empty phrase. Thirdly, this pseudo-moral uncompromising

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 357

straightforwardness means the absence of the most fundamental
and elementary moral impulse — pity, and pity precisely to
those who are most in need of it — to the 'least of these.' To
preach absolute morality and reject all moralising institutions, to
lay burdens too heavy to be borne upon the weak and helpless
shoulders of average humanity, is illogical, thoughtless, and Immoral.
Inherited property is the abiding realisation of moral inter
action in the most intimate and the most fundamental social
group — namely, in the family. Inherited wealth is, on the one
hand, the embodiment of pity, reaching beyond the grave,
of the parents for their children, and, on the other, a con
crete point of departure for a pious memory of the departed
parents. With these two is connected, at any rate with regard to
the most important kind of property — the property in land, a third
moral factor, viz. man's relation to the external nature, i.e. to the
earth. For the majority of men this relation can become moral
only on condition of their having inherited landed property. To
understand earthly nature and to love it for its own sake is given
to a few only ; but every one becomes naturally attached to his
own native spot, to the graves of his fathers and the haunts of
his childhood. It is a moral bond, and one which extends human
solidarity to material nature, thus making a beginning of its
spiritualisation. This fact both justifies the institution of in
herited property in land and serves as a basis for making it more
conformable to the demands of morality. It is not sufficient to
recognise the ideal character which obviously attaches to such
property : it is necessary to strengthen and develop this
character, protecting it from the low and selfish motives which
are natural enough at the present stage of human progress and
may easily gain the upper hand. Decisive check must be put upon
the treatment of the earth as a lifeless instrument of rapacious
exploitation ; the plots of land handed down from one generation
to another must, in principle, be made inalienable and sufficient
to maintain in each person a moral attitude towards the earth.
It will be said that, with the population constantly increasing,
enough land cannot be found both to preserve to each what he has
got, or even a part of it, and to give some to those who have not
got any. This objection appears to be a serious one, but is in truth
either thoughtless or unfair. It would certainly be very absurd

358 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

to suggest as an absolute, separate, and independent measure that
an inalienable plot of land should be secured to each and all.
This measure may and ought to be taken only in connection
with another reform — the cessation, namely, of that rapacious
method of cultivation which will end in there not being enough
land for any one, let alone for all. And if land is treated in the
moral way and looked after like a being whom one loves, the
minimum amount of land sufficient for each person may become
so small that there will be enough for those who have not got
any, without doing injustice to those who have.

As to the unlimited increase of population, it is not ordained by
any physical, and, still less, by any moral law. It is understood,
of course, that normal economics are only possible in connection
with the normal family, which is based upon rational asceticism
and not upon unchecked carnal instincts. The immoral exploita
tion of land cannot stop so long as there is immoral exploitation
of woman. If man's relation to his inner house (this is the name
applied by the Scriptures to the wife) is wrong, his relation to his
external house cannot be right either. A man who beats his
wife cannot care for the earth as he should. Speaking generally,
the moral solution of the economic question is intimately con
nected with the whole problem of life in the individual and the
race.

Just as there can be no physiological life without the inter
change of substances, so there can be no social life without the
interchange of things (and of signs representing them). This
important section of human material relations is studied on its
technical side by political economy, financial and commercial
law, and falls within the scope of moral philosophy only in
so far as exchange becomes fraud. To judge economic pheno
mena and relations as such — to affirm, e.g.^ as some moralists do,
that money is an evil, that there must be no commerce, that
banks ought to be abolished, etc. — is unpardonable childishness.
It is obvious that objects which are thus condemned are morally
indifferent or neutral, and become good or evil only according to
the quality and direction of the will that uses them. If we are

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 359

to give up money as an evil because many people use money for
evil purposes, we ought also to give up the power of articulate
speech, since many use it for swearing, idle talk, and slander ; we
should also have to give up using fire for fear of conflagrations,
and water for fear of persons committing suicide by drowning.
In truth, however, money, commerce, and banks are not in them
selves an evil but become an evil, or, more exactly, become the
consequence of an already existing evil and the cause of a new one,
when, instead of necessary interchange, they serve the purposes of
selfish fraud.

The root of evil in this case, as in the whole of the economic
sphere, is one and the same, namely, that the material interest is
made dominant instead of subservient, independent instead of
dependent, an end instead of a means. From this poisonous root
three noxious stems spring in the domain of exchange — falsifica
tion, speculation, and usury.

A modern text-book of political economy gives as a current
definition of commerce that it is a trade "consisting in the buying
and selling of goods with the object of gain." The description
of commerce as the buying and selling of goods is purely verbal ;
the important thing is the purpose which is here said to consist
entirely in the gain of the trader.1 If, however, the one object
of commerce is gain, all profitable falsification of goods and
all successful speculation is justified. And if gain is the purpose
of commerce, it is certainly also the purpose of money-lending ;
and since the latter is more profitable the higher the rate of
interest, unlimited usury is also justified. If, on the other hand,
such facts are recognised as inconsistent with the moral norm, it
must also be recognised that commerce and exchange in general
may only be a means of private gain on condition that they should
in the first place serve the community as a whole and fulfil a
social function for the good of all.

From this point of view the economic anomalies indicated
can only be abolished if their immoral root is destroyed. But
every one understands that the unchecked growth of a plant
strengthens its roots and extends them in breadth and in depth, and
that if the roots are very deep, the stem must be cut down first.

1 I do not, of course, hold the author of the book responsible for this definition,
since he only gives expression to the popular idea.

360 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

To speak without metaphors : apart from the inner, purely ideal
and verbal struggle with the vice of cupidity, normal society
can and ought decisively to oppose by means of concrete external
measures such luxurious growths of unlimited cupidity as com
mercial falsification, speculation, and usury.

Falsification of goods, especially of the objects of necessary
consumption, is a menace to public welfare and is not merely
immoral but positively criminal. In some cases it is regarded as
such even at the present day, but this view must be worked out
more consistently. When the whole legal procedure and system
of penalties l is reformed, increased persecution of these special
offences will not be an act of cruelty but of justice. Two things
ought to be remembered in this connection : in the first place,
that people who suffer most from this evil are the poor and
ignorant, who are unfortunate enough as it is ; and secondly, that
the unchecked performance of these crimes, as of all others, is in
jurious not only to the victims but to the criminals themselves,
who may feel that their immorality is justified and encouraged by
the condonation of society.

Financial operations with fictitious values (the so-called
4 speculations ') are certainly a social disease rather than a personal
crime, and the first remedy is absolute prohibition of institutions
whereby this disease is nurtured. As to usury, the only sure
method of abolishing it is, obviously, universal development of
normal credit, not with the object of gain but as a charitable
institution.

In discussing economic relations which ought to hold in the
domain of labour, property, and exchange, I have spoken throughout
of justice and right, conceptions which have also been presupposed
in the treatment of the penal question. For the most part the
terms 'justice ' and c right' carry the same meaning. The idea of
justice, however, expresses a purely moral demand, and therefore
belongs to the ethical sphere, while right determines a special
sphere of relations — namely, the legal one. Is this distinction
merely a misunderstanding or, if it is well grounded, what is the
meaning and the degree of it ? Turning now to the question as
to the relation of morality and legal justice or right, we may note,
without prejudging the content of our inquiry, that the question

1 See above, Part III., Chap. VI.

THE ECONOMIC QUESTION 361

is an extremely wide one, for the idea of right inevitably involves a
series of other ideas — law, authority, legal compulsion, state. In
discussing the organisation of just social relations I took these ideas
for granted, since such an organisation can obviously not be realised
through moral preaching alone.

CHAPTER VIII

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE
I

THE absolute moral principle, the demand^ namely, or the command
ment to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, or to realise
in ourselves the image and likeness of God, already contains in its
very nature the recognition of the relative element in morality.
For it is clear that the demand for perfection can only be addressed
to a being who is imperfect ; urging him to become like the higher
being, the commandment presupposes the lower stages and the
relative degrees of advance. Thus, the absolute moral principle
or the perfect good is for us, to use Hegel's language, a unity of
itself and its other, a synthesis of the absolute and the relative.
The existence of the relative or the imperfect, as distinct from the
absolute good, is a fact not to be got over, and to deny it, to
confuse the two terms, or, with the help, of dialectical tricks and
on the strength of mystical emotions, to affirm them as identical,
would be false. Equally false, however, is the opposite course —
the separation^ namely, of the relative from the absolute, as of two
wholly distinct spheres which have nothing in common. From
this dualistic point of view man himself, whose striving towards
the absolute is inseparably connected with relative conditions,
proves to be the incarnation of absurdity. The only rational
point of view, which both reason and conscience compel us to
adopt, consists in recognising that the actual duality between the
relative and the absolute resolves itself for us into a free and
complete unity (but not by any means into an empty identity of
indifference) through the real and moral process of approaching

362

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 363

perfection — a process ranging from the rigid stone to the glory
and freedom of the sons of God.

At each stage the relative is connected with the absolute
as a means for concretely bringing about the perfection of all ;
and this connection justifies the lesser good as a condition of
the greater. At the same time it justifies the absolute good itself,
which would not be absolute if it could not connect with itself or
include in one way or another all concrete relations. And indeed,
nowhere in the world accessible to us do we find the two
terms in separation or in their bare form. Everywhere the
absolute principle is clothed with relative forms, and the relative
is inwardly connected with the absolute and held together by it.
The difference lies simply in the comparative predominance of
one or the other aspect.

When some two species of concrete relations or some two
domains within which they are exemplified are separated from and
opposed to one another, one being regarded as absolute and another
as purely relative in meaning, we may be certain that the opposi
tion itself is purely relative. Each of the two domains is simply
a special instance of the relation between the absolute and the
relative, — relation different in form and degree, but identical in
nature and supreme purpose. And it is in this relation of both
to the absolute that the positive connection or the unity of the
two consists.

Within the limits of the active or practical life of humanity
there is apparent opposition between the moral sphere in the
strict sense and the sphere of legal justice. From ancient times,
beginning with the pagan Cynics and the Christian gnostics, and
down to our own day, this opposition has been taken to be un
conditional. Morality alone has been regarded as absolute, and
legal justice, as a purely conventional phenomenon, has been
rejected in the name of the absolute demands. One immediately
feels that this view is false, but moral philosophy compels us to
disregard this feeling which may, after all, be deceptive, and to
consider the true relation between morality and legal justice
from the standpoint of the absolute good. Is this good justified
by its relation to justice ? A person interested in etymology
may note that the answer is already contained in the terms of
the question. This philological circumstance will be discussed

364 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

further on, but it must not as such prejudge the philosophic
problem.

II

In his lectures on Criminal Law Professor N. S. Tagantsev
quotes, among other things, the following Prussian enactment of
the year 1739 :

" If an advocate or a procurator or any similar person ventures
to present any petition to his Royal Majesty, either personally
or through somebody else, it is the pleasure of his Royal Majesty
that the aforesaid person should be hanged without mercy, and a
dog be hanged by the side of him."

Of the legality or conformity to law of the enactment in
question there can be no doubt ; and there can be equally no
doubt of its being opposed to the most elementary demands of
justice. The opposition seems to be intentionally emphasised by
extending the punishment of the advocate or procurator to the
perfectly innocent dog. Similar, though not such glaring cases of
disagreement between morality and positive right, between justice
and law, are frequently met with in history. The question must
then be asked, how is this fact to be regarded, and which or
the two conflicting principles are we to adopt in practical life ?
The answer appears to be clear. Moral demands have.an inherent
character of being absolutely binding, which may be entirely
absent from the enactments of positive law. Hence the conclusion
seems legitimate that the question as to the relation between
morality and legal justice is settled by a simple rejection of the
latter as a binding principle of action. All human relations must
accordingly be reduced to purely moral interaction, and the sphere
of the legal or juridical determinations and relations must be
entirely rejected.

This conclusion is very easily thought of, but is also extremely
thoughtless. This 'antinomy,' or the absolute opposition between
morality and law, has never subjected its fundamental assumption
to any consistent or far-reaching criticism.

That a formally legal enactment, such as the edict of the king
of Prussia, quoted above, is opposed to the demands of morality is
only too obvious. But it may well be that it is also opposed to

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 365

the demands of legal justice itself. The possibility of conflict
between the formal legality of certain actions and the essence of
legal justice will become clearer to the reader if I give a concrete
instance of an analogous conflict between the formally -moral
character of an action and the true nature of morality.

It was reported in the papers a little while ago that a woman
suspected of causing the illness of a boy by means of a bewitched
apple was terribly injured and almost killed by the crowd in the
centre of Moscow — near St. Panteleimon's Chapel in Nikolsky
Street. Now these people acted independently of any interested
motives or external considerations ; they had no personal enmity to
the woman and no personal interest in beating her ; their sole
motive was the feeling that so outrageous a crime as the poisoning
of an innocent babe by means of sorcery ought to meet with just
retribution. Thus it cannot be denied that their behaviour had a
formally -moral character, though every one will agree that it
certainly was essentially immoral. If, however, the fact that
revolting crimes may be committed from purely moral motives
does not lead us to reject morality as such, there is no reason why
such essentially unjust, though legal, enactments as the Prussian
law of 1739 should be regarded as sufficient ground for rejecting
legal justice. In the case of the crime in Nikolsky Street it is
not the moral principle that is at fault, but the insufficient develop
ment of the moral consciousness in the half-savage crowd ; in the
case of the absurd Prussian law it is not the idea of legal justice
or law that is at fault, but only the small degree to which the idea
of justice was developed in the consciousness of King Friedrich-
Wilhelm. It would not be worth while to discuss the subject
were it not for the bad habit, which has become established of
late, especially with reference to legal questions, to deduce,
contrary to logic, general conclusions from concrete particular
instances.

Ill

It is not legal justice and morality that conflict and are incom
patible with one another, but the different states both of the legal
and the moral consciousness. Apart from these states and their
concrete expressions, there exist, however, in the domain of legal

366 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

justice, just as much as in the domain of morality, abiding and
essential norms, the presence of which is unconsciously admitted
even by the spirit of lying, in his sophistic attack on jurisprudence :

All rights and laws are still transmitted
Like an eternal sickness of the race, —
From generation unto generation fitted
And shifted round from place to place.
Reason becomes a sham, Beneficence a worry :
Thou art a grandchild, therefore woe to thee.
The right born with us, ours in verity
This to consider, there's, alas ! no hurry.

Even Mephistopheles recognises this natural right^ and merely
complains that it is ignored.1 In truth, however, it is referred to
whenever a question of right arises. No fact belonging to the
legal sphere, no expression of legal justice, can be judged of except
by reference to a general conception or norm of justice. Mephis
topheles himself applies this conception or norm when he says
that certain rights and laws, once rational and beneficial, have
become senseless and mischievous. He indicates here one aspect
of the case only, namely, the so-called conservatism of legal justice.
This fact, too, has its rational foundation, and the disadvantages
which it involves, and upon which Mephistopheles exclusively
dwells, are cancelled by another fact, not mentioned by the spirit
of lying for his own reasons — the fact, namely, that legal con
sciousness gradually develops, and that legal enactments are, as
a fact, improved. This unquestionable progress in the domain
of legal justice can be shown even in the case of the unjust law
quoted above. I do not simply mean that enactments like the
Prussian edict of 1739 have become utterly impossible in any
European country, and that the penalty of death even for the
worst and unquestionable crimes has long been condemned by the
best representatives of the legal profession. I contend that this
edict itself meant unquestionable progress in comparison with
the state of things which had once prevailed in Brandenburg and
Pomerania, as in the rest of Europe, when every powerful baron
could calmly put peaceful people to death for motives of personal

1 Apart from the direct meaning of this remark, it may be regarded as a kind of
prophecy of the persecution which, a quarter of a century after Goethe's death, the idea
of the natural right suffered in jurisprudence. There are signs which show that this
persecution is coming to an end.

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 367

vengeance, or for the sake of seizing their property. At the time
of Frederick the Great's father it was the king alone who had the
power to take a man's life, and, in doing so, he had no personal
or selfish purpose in view. It is obvious, indeed, that Friedrich
Wilhelm's object in composing his edict was to put down denun
ciation and slander by the threat of the penalty of death, and not
actually to deprive of life advocates, procurators, and dogs. The
barons of the old times were unquestionably guilty of murder and
robbery, but the king, even when publishing the revolting edict,
was still acting as the guardian of justice, though at a very low
level of legal consciousness.

This difference of degree, this actual progress in legal justice,
the steady advance of the legal enactments towards legal norms,
conformable to, though not identical with, the moral demands,
sufficiently proves that the relation between the two principles
is not merely negative. It shows that it is unpermissible from
the point of view of morality itself to dismiss the whole range of
legal facts and problems by a simple and meaningless rejection
of them.

IV

The relation between the moral and the legal sphere is
one of the fundamental questions of practical philosophy. It
is really the question as to the relation between the ideal moral
consciousness and the actual life. The vitality and the fruitfulness
of the moral consciousness depends upon this relation being under
stood in a positive sense. Between the ideal good on the one
hand and the evil reality on the other lies the intermediate sphere
of law and justice, whose function is to give concrete embodiment
to the good, to limit and to correct the evil. Justice and its
embodiment — the state — condition the actual organisation of the
moral life of humanity. Moral preaching which takes up a
negative attitude towards justice as such could have no objective
basis or means of expression in the real environment that is foreign
to it, and would remain at best an innocent pastime. If, on the
other hand, the formal conceptions and institutions of legal justice
were completely severed from the moral principles and purposes,
legality would lose its absolute basis and become purely arbitrary.

368 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Indeed, in order consistently to carry out the separation between
legal right and morality it would be necessary to give up the
ordinary use of speech, which, in all languages, unmistakably testifies
to the fundamental inner relation between the two ideas. The
conception of right and the correlative conception of duty form so
essential a part of the system of moral ideas that they may serve
as a direct expression of them. Every one understands and no one
would dispute such moral affirmations as : I am conscious of the
duty to abstain from everything shameful, or, what is the same
thing, I recognise that human dignity (in my own person) has a
right to my respect ; it is my duty to help my neighbours as much
as in me lies and to serve the common good, i.e. my neighbours
and society as a whole have a right to my help and service ; finally,
it is my duty to harmonise my will with what I regard as the
highest of all, or, in other words, the absolutely highest has a right
to a religious attitude on my part (which is the ultimate basis of
all religious worship).

There is not a single moral relation which could not be
correctly and intelligibly expressed in terms of right. One would
think that nothing could be more remote from the juridical order
of ideas than love for one's enemies. And yet if the supreme
moral law proclaims it my duty to love my enemies, it is clear that
my enemies have a right to my love. If I deny love to them, I
act unjustly, I sin against what is right. Here we have a term
which alone embodies the essential unity of the juridical and the
moral principles.1 For rights are nothing more than the expression
of what is right, and, on the other hand, all virtues2 are reducible
to the idea of right or justice, i.e. to what is right or due in the
ethical sense. This is not a case of accidental similarity of terms,
but of essential homogeneity and inner connection of the ideas
themselves.

It does not, of course, follow that the sphere of legal justice
and morality coincide, or that the moral and the juridical concep-

1 In all languages, moral and juridical conceptions are expressed either by the same
terms or by terms derived from the same root. The Russian Jo/g, like the Latin debitum
(hence the French devoir) and the German Schuld have both a moral and a juridical
meaning ; in the case of §4*77 and SiKaio<7i>vrj,jus and justitia, of the Russian pra-vo and
pravda, the German Recht and Gerechtigkeit, the English right and righteousness, the two
meanings are distinguished by the use of suffixes. Cp. also the Hebrew tsedek and tscdakah.

2 See above, Part I., Chapter V. : " Virtues."

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 369

tions should be confused. One thing only is indisputable, namely,
that there is a positive and intimate relation between the two
spheres, which does not permit of one being rejected in the name
of the other. The question, then, is in what precisely does the
connection and the difference between them consist.

V

The fact that we speak of moral right and moral duty, on the
one hand proves the absence of any fundamental opposition or
incompatibility of the moral and the juridical principles, and,
on the other, indicates an essential difference between them. In
designating a given right (e.g. the right of my enemy to my love)
as moral only, we imply that in addition to the moral there
exist other rights, i.e. rights in a more restricted sense, or that
there exists right as such, which is not directly and immediately
characterised as moral. Take, on the one hand, the duty of loving
our enemies and their corresponding right to our love, and on the
other, take the duty to pay one's debts, or the duty not to rob
and murder one's neighbours and their corresponding right not to
be robbed, murdered, or deceived by us. It is obvious that there
is an essential difference between the two kinds of relation, and
that only the second of them falls within the scope of justice in
the narrow sense of the term.

The difference can be reduced to three main points :
(i) A purely moral demand, such, e.g., as the love for one's
enemies, is unlimited or all-embracing in nature ; it presupposes
moral perfection, or, at any rate, an unlimited striving towards
perfection. Every limitation admitted as a matter of principle is
opposed to the nature of the moral commandment and under
mines its dignity and significance. If a person gives up the
absolute moral ideal as a principle, he gives up morality itself and
leaves the moral ground. Juridical law, on the contrary, is
essentially limited, as is clearly seen in all cases of its application.
In the place of perfection it demands the lowest, the minimum
degree of morality, that is, simply, actual restraint of certain
manifestations of the immoral will. This distinction, however, is
not an opposition leading to real conflict. From the moral point
of view it cannot be denied that the demand conscientiously to

2 B

370 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

fulfil monetary obligations, to abstain from murder, robbery, etc., is
a demand for what is good — though extremely elementary — and
not for what is evil. It is clear that if we ought to love our
enemies, it goes without saying that we ought to respect the life and
property of all fellow-men. The higher commandments cannot
be fulfilled without observing the lower. As to the juridical
side of the matter, though the civil or the penal law does not
demand the supreme moral perfection, it is not opposed to it. For
bidding every one to murder or be fraudulent, it cannot, and indeed
has no need to, prevent any one from loving his enemies. Thus
with regard to this point (which in certain moral theories is
erroneously taken to be the only important one), the relation
between the two principles of the practical life may be only
expressed by saying that legal justice is the lowest limit or the
minimum degree of morality.

(2) The unlimited character of the purely moral demands leads
to another point of difference. The way in which such demands
are to be fulfilled is not definitely prescribed, nor is it limited to
any concrete external manifestations or material actions. The
commandment to love one's enemies does not indicate, except
as an example, what precisely we ought to do in virtue of that
love, i.e. which particular actions we ought to perform and from
which to abstain. At the same time, if love is expressed by
means of definite actions, the moral commandment cannot be
regarded as already fulfilled by these actions and as demanding
nothing further. The task of fulfilling the commandment, which
is an expression of the absolute perfection, remains infinite.
Juridical laws, on the contrary, prescribe or prohibit perfectly
definite external actions, with the performance or non-perform
ance of which the law is satisfied and demands nothing further.
If I produce in due time the money I am owing, and pass it to
my creditor, if I do not murder or rob any one, etc., the law
is satisfied and wants nothing more from me. This difference
between the moral and the juridical law once more involves no
contradiction. The demand for the moral inner disposition, so
far from excluding external actions, directly presupposes them as
its own proof or justification. No one would believe in the
inward goodness of a man if it never showed itself in any works
of mercy. On the other hand, the request to perform definite

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 371

actions is in no way opposed to the inner states corresponding to
them, though it does not demand them. Both the moral and the
juridical laws are concerned with the inner being of man, with
his will ; but while the first takes this will in its universality and
entirety, the second has only to do with particular expressions of
it in respect of certain external facts, which fall within the
province of justice in the narrow sense, — such as the inviolability
of the life and property of each person, etc. What is of im
portance from the juridical point of view is precisely the objective
expression of our will in committing or in refraining from certain
actions. This is another essential characteristic of legal justice,
and, in addition to the original definition of it as a certain
minimum of morality, we may now say that legal justice is the
demand for the realisation of this minimum, i.e. for carrying out a
certain minimum of the good, or, what is the same thing, for doing
away with a certain amount of evil. Morality in the strict sense
is immediately concerned, not with the external realisation of the
good, but with its inner existence in the heart of man.

(3) This second distinction involves a third one. The demand
for moral perfection as an inner state presupposes free or voluntary
fulfilment. Not only physical but even psychological compulsion
is here, from the nature of the case, both undesirable and impossible.
External realisation of a certain uniform order, on the contrary,
admits of direct or indirect compulsion. And in so far as the direct
and immediate purpose of legal justice is precisely the realisation
or the external embodiment of a certain good — e.g. of public safety
— in so far the compelling character of the law is a necessity ; for
no genuine person could seriously maintain that by means of
verbal persuasion alone all murders, frauds, etc., could be im
mediately stopped.

VI

Combining the three characteristics indicated we obtain the
following definition of legal justice in its relation to morality :
legal justice is a compulsory demand for the realisation of a definite
minimum of the good, or for a social order which excludes certain
manifestations of evil.

The question has now to be asked, what is the ground for such

372 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

a demand, and in what way is this compulsory order compatible
with the purely moral order, which apparently by its very nature
excludes all compulsion. It may be urged that once the perfect
good is established in consciousness as an ideal, each ought to be
allowed freely to realise it as much as in him lies. Why, it will
be said, make into a law the compulsory minimum of morality,
when we ought freely to fulfil the maximum ? Why declare
under penalty, cThou shalt not kill,' when we ought mildly to
exhort people not to be angry ?

All this would be perfectly true were the moral problem a
theoretical one and were the perfect good compatible with selfish
impassibility or indifference to the sufferings of others. But
since the true conception of the good necessarily includes the
principle of altruism, which demands corresponding behaviour on
our part, i.e. demands that compassion for the ills of others
should prompt us actively to save them from evil, moral duty
certainly requires us to do more than simply to profess the
perfect ideal. In the natural course of things, which ought not
to be approved of or acquiesced in, but which it is childish not to
take into account, what would happen is this : whilst some would
be freely striving towards the supreme ideal and grow perfect in
impassibility, others would exercise themselves, unhindered, in
every conceivable crime and would certainly exterminate the first
before they could attain a high degree of moral perfection. But
even supposing that men of good will were by some miracle saved
from extermination by the bad ones, these good men themselves
would obviously prove to be insufficiently good if they would be
content with pious conversations about the good, instead of actively
helping their neighbours and protecting them against the extreme
and destructive forms of evil.

Moral interest demands personal freedom as a condition apart
from which human dignity and higher moral development is
impossible. But man cannot exist, and, consequently, cannot
perfect his freedom and his moral nature apart from society.
Moral interest therefore demands that personal freedom should
not conflict with the conditions which render the existence of
society possible. This demand cannot be carried into effect by
means of the ideal of moral perfection, which the individual is
to attain by his own free efforts. For the essential practical

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 373

purpose before us this ideal gives both too much and too little —
its demands are too great and its concrete results too small. Of
the person who recognises it, the ideal demands that he should
love his enemies ; but it cannot compel those who do not recognise
its demands to abstain even from murder and robbery. The
strict moralist will perhaps say, c We don't want people to abstain
from crimes unless they do so voluntarily ' ; but in saying this
he would be guilty of obvious injustice. He will have forgotten
to ask the opinion of the plundered people themselves and of the
families whose members have been murdered — as though the
injury they had suffered is the ground for regarding them as
completely rightless.

The moral law has been given to man c that he might live
thereby'; and if human society did not exist, morality would
remain merely an abstract idea. The existence of society, however,
depends not on the perfection of some, but on the security of
all. This security is not guaranteed by the moral law, which
is non-existent for persons in whom anti-social instincts pre
dominate, but it is safeguarded by the compulsory law which has
actual power over every one. To appeal to the gracious power
of Providence to restrain and exhort lunatics and criminals is
sheer blasphemy. It is impious to lay upon the Deity that which
can be successfully performed by a good legal system.

The moral principle demands, then, that men should freely
seek perfection. To this end the existence of society is necessary.
Society cannot exist if each person wishing to do so may,
without let or hindrance, rob and murder his neighbours. Hence
the compulsory law, which actually prevents these extreme expres
sions of the evil will, is a necessary condition of moral perfection ;
as such it is demanded by the moral principle itself, though it
is not a direct expression of it.

Let it be granted that the highest morality, on its ascetic
side, demands that I should be indifferent to the prospect of
being killed, mutilated, or robbed. But the same supreme
morality on its altruistic side does not permit me to remain
indifferent to the fact that my neighbours may, without inter
ference from any one, become murderers or be murdered,
robbers or the robbed, and that society, apart from which
the individual cannot live and develop, should run the risk of

374 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

being destroyed. Such indifference would be a clear sign of
moral death.

The demand for personal liberty'presupposes for its realisation
the restriction of that liberty to the extent in which, at the
given state of humanity, it is incompatible with the existence of
society or with the common good. From the point of view of
abstract thought there appears to be an opposition between
these two interests, both of which are equally binding morally.
In reality, however, they coincide, and legal justice is the off
spring of their union.

VII

The principle of legal justice may be considered in the
abstract, and in that case it is simply a direct expression of moral
justice. I affirm my freedom as my right in so far as I recognise
the freedom of others as their right ; but the conception of
right necessarily involves, as we have seen, an objective element,
or a demand to be realised. Right must be capable of realisation :
that is, the freedom of others, whether recognised by me or
not, must, independently of my personal feeling of justice,
restrict my freedom within limits equally binding upon every one.
This demand for compulsory justice follows from the idea of
the common good or public interest, or, what is the same thing,
from the idea of the realisation of the good, which inevitably
requires that justice should be an actual fact and not an idea
merely. The degree and the 'means of the realisation depend,
of course, upon the state of the moral consciousness in the given
society and upon other historical conditions. The natural right
thus becomes the positive right, and can, from this point of view,
be formulated as follows : legal justice is the historically changeable
determination of the necessary equilibrium^ maintained by compulsion^
between two moral interests — that of personal freedom and of the
common good.

It would be a fatal confusion of ideas to believe that justice
has for its purpose material equalisation of private interests.
Justice as such has nothing to do with this. It is concerned
only with the two main factors of human life — the freedom of
the individual and the good of society. When legal justice

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 375

limits itself to this and does not introduce the element of com
pulsion into private relations, it does the best service to morality.
The individual must be moral by his free choice, and for that
he must have a certain freedom to be immoral. Within certain
limits justice secures this freedom to him, though it in no way
inclines him to take advantage of it. Had not the creditor the
right to compel his debtor to pay the money owing to him, he
would not be able by a free moral act to renounce his right and
to forgive a poor man his debt. On the other hand, the fact
that the debtor is compelled to abide by the obligation he has
freely entered upon, preserves his freedom and his full rights in
relation to the creditor : he is not dependent upon the creditor's
will but upon his own decision and the law of the land. The
interest of individual freedom coincides in this case with the
interest of the common good, since without the security of free
contracts there can be no normal social life.

The harmony of the two moral interests is still more obvious
in the case of the penal law. It is clear that the freedom of
the individual, or his natural right to live and to strive for
perfection, would be an empty sound if it depended upon the
whim of every other individual who might want to murder or
to cripple his neighbour, or to deprive him of the means of
subsistence. It is our moral right to defend our freedom and
safety from the attacks made upon it by the evil will of others,
and it is our moral duty to help other people to do the same.
This common duty is discharged for the benefit of all by the
penal law.

Legal compulsion in this sphere secures the freedom of peace
ful citizens, but it leaves sufficient room for the exercise of evil
propensities and compels no one to be virtuous. A malicious man
may, if he likes, give vent to his malice in evil-speaking, intrigues,
slander, quarrels, etc. It is only when the evil will attacks the
objective public rights of the individuals, and threatens the
security of society itself, that it becomes necessary for the sake of
the common good, which coincides with the freedom of peaceful
citizens, to limit the freedom of evil. In the interests of freedom,
legal justice allows men to be wicked, and does not interfere with
their free choice between good and evil. But in the interests of
the common good it prevents the evil man from becoming an

376 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

evil-doer^ dangerous to the very existence of society. The purpose
of legal justice is not to transform the world which lies in evil into
the kingdom of God, but only to prevent it from changing too
soon into hell.

Such premature hell has threatened and, to a certain extent,
still threatens humanity on two sides. The normal society, that
is, a society that leads a secure and worthy existence and progresses
towards perfection, is conditioned by the proper balance being
maintained between the individual and the collective interest.
Hence, anomalies perilous to society may arise either from the
excess of individual power, breaking up the social solidarity, or,
on the contrary, from the excess of social control crushing the
individual. The first anomaly menaces humanity with the
burning hell of anarchy j the second, with the icy hell of despot
ism, i.e. of the same anarchy or arbitrariness concentrated at one
point and pressing upon society from without.

In actual history the balance between free individual powers
and the collective power of the social organisation is, of course,
movable and variable, made up of a number of particular deviations
and rectifications. But the very fact that we note these variations
is sufficient to prove that above them lie the abiding norms of
social and individual relations — the eternal boundaries which
spring from the very nature of morality, and cannot, without
fatal consequences, be overstepped by society either in the one
direction or in the other. The most universal and in this sense
the most important of these boundaries is that which limits the
compelling power of social organisations to the domain of the
objective or practical good, leaving all the rest, i.e. all the inner
or spiritual world of man, to the entire responsibility of individuals
and of free associations. To defend the life and property of
every one against the attacks of external and internal enemies,
to secure to all the necessary education, food, medical assistance,
and all that is connected therewith (means of communication,
post, etc.), — this is the practical good which can and ought to be
realised by the organised power of the society. For this end
society must inevitably impose certain restrictions or liabilities.
The compulsory character of these restrictions is specific only, for
it is clear that a person who, for instance, voluntarily abstains
from crimes does not experience any personal inconvenience from

. MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 377

the legal and penal institutions. Speaking generally, all restric
tions due to the necessary organisation of social forces are as little
opposed to individual freedom as the fact that if I intend to buy a
thing I must pay for it, or that if I do not want to get wet in the
rain I must take an umbrella.

The essential characteristic of the good which is conditioned by
the organisation of legal justice in society is not its compulsory
character — which is merely a possible consequence of it — but the
direct objectivity of its aim. What is above all things important is
that certain things should and certain things should not exist as a
fact. It is important that there should be protection against
savage peoples, so that they should not burn and destroy towns
and villages j it is important that evil men should not rob and
murder the wayfarers ; it is important that the population should
not be exterminated by diseases ; it is important that every one
should have access to intellectual education and enlightenment.

These necessary goods are external in character, and the way
to obtain them is also external, admitting of compulsion where it
is inevitable. To the immediate, essential work of the law courts,
hospitals, schools, it makes no difference whatever whether they
are supported by voluntary subscriptions or by compulsory taxation.
The same thing, however, cannot be said of spiritual goods,
which from their very nature cannot be compulsory. There are,
in the last resort, two such goods for man : virtue, i.e. inner
inclination of our will to the good as such^ and truth or right belief,
i.e. inner agreement of our reason with truth as such. It is clear from
these definitions alone that freedom or spontaneousness forms an
essential part of both the spiritual or inward goods. Therefore
all compulsory external action in this sphere is, in the first place,
a fraud. The purpose of externally compelling or forcing a man
to have an inner, i.e. an inwardly determined, disposition for the
good, or an inner receptivity for the true, cannot possibly be
achieved, and is indeed a logical contradiction or absurdity ; and
to use compulsion to no purpose is obviously an evil. Hence, all
compulsory measures with regard to spiritual things in the supposed
interests of truth and virtue are nothing other than the use of evil
means for a false purpose — an abuse in the fullest sense.

There are three kinds of violence in our world: (i) brutal
violence, such as is committed by murderers, highwaymen,

378 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

corrupters of children ; (2) human violence, necessarily permitted
by the compulsory organisation of society for safeguarding the
external goods of life ; and (3) violent intrusion of the external
social organisation into the spiritual life of man, with the false
purpose of safeguarding the inner goods — a species of violence
which is wholly false and evil, and may therefore justly be called
diabolical.

VIII

From the nature of legal justice, which serves the external
or the objective good, it follows that truth and virtue must always
remain a private concern, and one which is perfectly free. In
addition to the principle of unlimited religious tolerance, certain
other consequences follow from this.

In the domain of the penal as well as of the civil law the
freedom of the individual is limited, not by the private or sub
jective interest of other individuals taken separately^ but by the
good of all. Many vain and self-conscious people would rather
be plundered or even crippled than suffer secret abuse, slander,
and heartless condemnation. If, therefore, legal justice aimed at
the protection of private interest as such, it would in cases of
this kind have to limit the freedom of slanderers and evil-speakers
even more than the freedom of robbers and men of violence.
But it does not do so, for verbal insults are not so detrimental
to the safety of society, and do not indicate so menacing a
degree of evil will as the crimes against person and property.
Even if the law intended to cope with such actions, it would be
impossible for it to take into account all the forms and degrees of
individual sensibility to insults. And if it could do so, it would be
unjust, for it is impossible to prove that the guilty person intended
to cause the high degree of suffering which he did cause in
reality. Common law may only be guided by definite intentions
and objective actions which can be verified by every one. Besides,
in the cases which do not fall within the scope of penal law,
the injured person may, if he likes, avenge himself on the
injurer by the same means. His freedom in this respect is
respected as much as that of his adversary. And if he is morally
superior to the latter, and thinks that he ought not to avenge

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 379

himself, he would not in any case have appealed to the law,
however sensible he may have been of the injury. If he abstains
from personal revenge, so much the better for him and for society,
which is at liberty freely to express its moral judgment. What
matters from the legal point of view is not the evil will as such^
and not the result of action, which may, as such^ be accidental,
but only the connection of the intention with the result, or the
extent to which the evil will is realised in action. It matters
to it because the degree of realisation and the corresponding
degree of danger to society may be determined objectively and
is an external evil, the protection from which is an external good,
admitting of legal compulsion.

IX

Since the essence of legal justice consists in maintaining the
balance between two moral interests — that of individual liberty
and of the common good, it is clear that though the latter
interest may limit the former it may not under any circumstances
abolish it. For in that case the balance would obviously be
disturbed and disappear through the destruction of one of the
terms of the relation. Therefore measures against the criminal
should never go so far as to deprive him of life or to take away
his freedom for ever. Laws which permit capital punishment,
lifelong penal servitude, or lifelong solitary confinement cannot
be justified from the legal point of view — they contradict the
very nature of legal justice. Besides, the contention that in
certain cases the common good requires that a given person should
be completely done away with, involves a logical self-contradiction.
Common good is common just because in a certain sense it contains
the good of all individual persons without exception j if it did not,
it would be the good of the majority. It does not follow that
it therefore is a mere sum of private interests, or that it allows
of unlimited individual freedom. This would be another
contradiction, since the unlimited freedom of one individual may,
and actually does, conflict with the liberty of others. But the
conception of the common good implies with logical necessity that
in restricting particular interests and activities within common
bounds it cannot do away with a single bearer of such interests

380 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and activities by depriving him of life or of all possibility of free
action. The common good must, in one way or another, be the
good of this individual also. But if it deprives him of existence
and of the possibility of free action — that is, of the possibility of
any good at all — it ceases to be a good for him ; it itself then
becomes merely a private interest, and therefore loses its right to
limit personal liberty.1

With reference to this point, too, we see that the demands
of morality entirely coincide with the essence of legal justice.
Speaking generally, although legal justice in exercising compulsion
to secure the minimum of good differs from morality in the
strict sense, yet in its exercise of compulsion it observes the
demands of morality, and must on no account conflict with it.
If, therefore, some positive law is opposed to the moral con
sciousness of the good, we may be a priori certain that it does not
satisfy the essential demands of justice either. So far as such
laws are concerned, it is not in the interests of justice that they
should be retained, but that they should be lawfully repealed.

X

External compulsion is one of the essential characteristics of
the norms of legal justice as distinct from moral norms in the
strict sense. Hence, justice from its very nature requires
guarantees^ i.e. sufficient power to enforce the realisation of its
norms.

Every person in virtue of his absolute moral worth has an
inalienable right to exist and to strive for perfection. This
moral right would, however, be an empty word were its actual
realisation to depend entirely upon external happenings and the
arbitrary will of others. To be real, a right must contain within
itself the conditions of its own realisation, i.e. it must be safe
guarded from violation. The first and essential condition of this
is communal life, since a solitary man is obviously powerless
against the forces of nature, wild beasts, and brutal men. But

1 After what has been said in Chapter VI. on the penal question, I need not
explain that the moral principle not only permits but in certain cases actually demands
that the criminal should for a time be deprived of liberty, both for his own good and
for the sake of public safety. But it is morally impossible to inflict the penalty of
death, or to pass a sentence depriving a man of liberty for the rest of his life.

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 381

being the necessary defence of individual liberty, or of the natural
rights of man, communal life involves at the same time a limita
tion of these rights — not an accidental or arbitrary limitation,
but one that follows from the nature of the case and is inwardly
binding. Making use of the social organisation to safeguard my
existence and free activity, I must recognise in my turn the
right of that organisation to exist and to exercise its authority
over me — that is, I must submit my activity to conditions that
are necessary to the existence and the development of society.
In this case the two interests coincide, for if I desire to realise
my right, or to secure for myself a sphere of free activity, I must
determine the degree of the realisation or the extent of the
freedom in accordance with the fundamental demands of the
social good, apart from which there can be no realisation of my
rights at all nor any safeguards of my freedom. The individual's
subordination to society is in perfect agreement with the absolute
moral principle which does not sacrifice the particular to the
universal, but unites them by an inner bond of solidarity. In
surrendering to society his unlimited but insecure and unreal
freedom, the individual has his determined or rational freedom
secured to him — the sacrifice is as profitable as the exchange
of a dead lion for a living dog.

The definite limitation of personal freedom in given conditions
of time and place, in accordance with the demands of the common
good, or, what is the same thing, a certain balance or a constant
harmony between these two principles, is a positive right or law
in the strict sense.

Law, as such, is a universally recognised and impersonal — i.e.
independent of personal opinions and desires — determination of
right, or an expression of a proper balance (under given con
ditions and in certain respects), between individual liberty and
the good of the whole. It is a definition or a general notion
which finds concrete realisation through particular judgments
in the individual cases or instances.

Hence the three necessary characteristics of law are : (i) its
publicity ; an enactment that is not made generally known cannot
be universally binding, i.e. cannot be a positive law ; (2) its con-
creteness ; it is the norm of some particular definite relations in
a given real environment and not the expression of any abstract

382 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

truth or ideal ; l (3) its real applicability in each individual case ;
this is ensured by the law being always accompanied by a
'sanction,' i.e. by its holding out the threat of compulsory and
punitive measures if its demands are unfulfilled or its prohibi
tions violated.2

In order that the sanction might not remain an empty
threat the law must be supported by some real power sufficient
to carry its demands into execution. In other words, justice
must have its actual bearers or representatives in society who
would be sufficiently powerful to give a binding force to the
laws they publish and to the sentences they pass. Such actual
representatives of justice or agents of the law are called authorities.

I am bound to demand that the social whole should safe
guard my natural rights in a way in which I myself am unable
to safeguard them, and in doing so I am bound in reason and
conscience to recognise the positive right of this social whole
to use means and methods of action without which it could not
fulfil this necessary and desirable task. Namely, I must leave
to the social whole, (i) the power to issue generally binding laws j
(2) the power to judge, in accordance with these laws, private
affairs and actions ; and (3) the power to compel each and all to
fulfil the legal verdicts and all other measures necessary for general
security and welfare.

It is clear that these three different powers — the legislative,
the judicial and the executive, though necessarily distinct^ cannot
be separate^ and ought on no account to conflict with one
another : they all have one and the same purpose — to serve the
common good in accordance with the law. Their unity finds
its real expression in their being equally subordinate to one
supreme authority, invested with all the positive rights of the
social whole as such. This central power finds immediate ex
pression as legislative authority. Judicial authority is conditioned
by the first, since a court of justice is not autonomous, but acts
in accordance with a law that is binding upon it. The first

1 Certain law-codes still preserve — on paper — enactments which require that people
should abstain from drunkenness, be pious, honour their parents, etc. But such
spurious laws are merely a vestige of the primitive state in which the moral and the
juridical conceptions were confused or merged into one.

2 The pious wishes of the lawgiver referred to in the last note are not accompanied
by any sanction, which fact sufficiently proves that they are spurious laws.

MORALITY AND LEGAL JUSTICE 383

two authorities condition the third, which is concerned with
enforcing laws and verdicts. In virtue of this inner connection,
without the one supreme authority in one form or another
there could be neither universally binding laws, nor regular
functioning of justice, nor effective administration, and the
purpose of social organisation could not be attained. It is clear,
of course, that the due relationship between the three authorities
is violated both by separating and placing them in hostile
opposition to one another, and by confusing them and distorting
their natural order. This happens, for instance, when the second
authority, the judicial one, is subordinate not to the first but to
the third, and is dependent not upon the law but upon the different
organs of the executive power.

The social body with a definite organisation, containing in
itself the fulness of positive rights or the one supreme authority,
is called the state. In every organism it is necessary to dis
tinguish the organising principle, the system of the organs or of
the instruments whereby the organisation is carried out and the
totality of elements to be organised. Corresponding to this, we
distinguish in the collective organism of the state, taken in the
concrete, ( i ) the supreme authority ; (2) its different organs or
subordinate authorities j (3) the substratum of the state, i.e. the
mass of the population of a given territory, consisting of individuals,
families and other more or less broad private unions subordinate
to the authority of the state. In the state alone does justice find
all the conditions necessary for its concrete realisation, and from
this point of view the state is the embodiment of justice.

Without dwelling here upon the question as to the actual
historical origin and the supreme sanction of the state authority,1
I have simply indicated informal basis as the necessary condition
of a just organisation of society. In its simplest practical
expression the meaning of the state consists in subordinating,
within its limits, violence to justice, arbitrariness to legality, and
replacing the chaotic and destructive conflict of the particular
elements of natural humanity by a regular order of existence.
Compulsion is exercised by the state only in the last extremity,
the extent of it is determined beforehand in accordance with
law, and it is justified by the fact that it proceeds from a common

1 See above, Part III., Chapters I. and VI., and below, Chapters IX. and X.

384 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

and impartial authority. This authority, however, extends only
to the boundaries of the given state's territory. There is no
supreme authority above individual states, and therefore conflicts
between them are in the last resort decided by means of
violence only — by war. That this fact contradicts the absolute
principle of morality, there can be no question. The relative
significance of war and the best means of abolishing it are the
last of the fundamental practical questions which the collective
life of historical humanity puts before the moral consciousness.

CHAPTER IX

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR

No one, I fancy, doubts that, speaking generally, health is a
good thing and disease a bad one, that the first is normal and
the second anomalous. The only way to define health, indeed,
is to call it the normal state of the organism, and disease c the
deviation of the physiological life from its normal condition.'
This anomaly of the physiological life, called disease, is not
however a meaningless accident or an arbitrary product of
external evil forces. Not to speak of the inevitable diseases
of growth or development, the opinion of all thoughtful medical
men is that the true cause of all disease lies in the inner
deep -lying changes of the organism itself, and the external
immediate causes of illness (e.g. catching cold, exhaustion,
infection, etc.) are merely the occasions for the inner cause to
manifest itself. Similarly, the abnormal phenomena which
ignorant people usually identify with the disease itself (e.g. fever
and shivering fits, cough, various pains, abnormal secretion) in
truth simply express the successful or the unsuccessful struggle
of the organism against the destructive effect of the inner
disturbances in which the disease really consists ; their ultimate
nature for the most part remains unknown, though they un
doubtedly exist as a fact. Hence follows the practical conclusion
that medical art must have for its main object not the external
symptoms of a disease but its inner causes. At any rate it must
detect their presence and then assist the healing work of the
organism itself, by hastening and encouraging the natural processes
and not doing violence to them.

385 2 C

386 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

The position of the chronic disease of humanity — inter
national hostility, expressing itself in wars, is analogous. Its
symptomatic treatment, a treatment, that is, directed upon its
external expressions rather than its inner causes, would be at
best a doubtful procedure ; a simple and absolute rejection of it
would have no definite meaning whatever. So long as there is
moral disturbance within humanity, external wars may be useful
and necessary, just as in the case of profound physical disturbance
such abnormal phenomena as fever or sickness may be useful and
necessary.

In strictness, we ought to ask with regard to war three
different questions instead of one only. In addition to the moral
value of war in general, there is another question, namely, its
significance in the history of humanity — a history which is not yet
completed, and there is a third personal question as to how I
(that is, how any human being), recognising with reason and
conscience the binding character of moral demands, must regard
here and now the fact of war and the practical consequences that
follow from it. The confusion or the wrong division of these
three questions — the generally moral or theoretical, the historical,
and, finally, the personally-moral or the practical — is the chief cause
of all misunderstandings and misconceptions with regard to war
which have of late become particularly prevalent.

Theoretical condemnation of war has long been a common
place among civilised people. Every one agrees that peace is a
good and war an evil. Our tongue automatically speaks of the
blessings of peace and the horrors of 'war •, and no one would venture
to say the opposite — c the blessings of war ' or ' the horrors of
peace.' In all churches prayers are offered for peaceful times and
for deliverance from the sword or wars, which are placed along
with fire, famine, pestilence, earthquake and flood. With the
exception of savage paganism all religions condemn war in
principle. The Jewish prophets had preached the coming of
peace among men and peace in the whole realm of nature.
The Buddhist principle of compassion to all living beings
requires the same thing. The Christian commandment of
loving one's enemies excludes war, since a loved enemy ceases to
be an enemy and cannot be made war upon. Even the bellicose
religion of Islam regards war only as a temporary necessity and

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 387

condemns it from the point of view of the ideal. " Fight your
enemies until Islam is established," and then "let all hostility
cease " for "God abominates the aggressor " (Koran^ sura ii.).

II

Thus to the first question with regard to war there exists
only one indisputable answer : war is an evil. Evil may be
either absolute (such as deadly sin, eternal damnation) or relative,
that is, it may be less than some other evil, and, as compared with
it, may be regarded as a good (e.g. a surgical operation to save a
patient's life).

The significance of war is not exhausted by the negative
definition of it as an evil and a calamity. There is also a positive
element in it — not in the sense that it can itself be normal, but
in the sense that it may be actually necessary in the given condi
tions. This way of regarding abnormal phenomena in general
is not to be avoided and must be adopted in virtue of the direct
demands of the moral ideal and not in contradiction to it. Thus,
for instance, every one will agree that, speaking generally, it is
godless, inhuman, and unnatural to throw children out of the
window on to the pavement. Yet in case of a fire, if there were
no other means of extricating the unfortunate babes from the
burning house, this terrible action would become permissible and
even obligatory. It is obvious that the rule to throw children in
extreme cases out of the window is not an independent principle
on a level with the moral principle of saving those in danger ;
this latter moral demand still remains the only motive of action.
It is not a case of deviation from the moral norm but of actual
realisation of that norm in a way which, though dangerous and
irregular, proves from real necessity to be the only possible one
under given conditions.

It may be that war too depends upon a necessity which
renders this essentially abnormal course of action permissible and
even obligatory under certain conditions. This question can only
be settled by an appeal to history. Sometimes, however, it is
mistakenly treated from the wider naturally-scientific point of
view, and the necessity of war is connected with the alleged
universal principle of struggle for existence.

388 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

In truth, however, the struggle for existence neither in the
human nor in the animal kingdom has anything to do with war.
When it is said that a certain species was victorious in the struggle
for existence, this does not at all mean that it had overcome any
enemies in direct encounters or real battles. It simply means
that sufficient adaptation to external environment enabled the
species in question to survive and to multiply — which all do not
equally succeed in doing. In the struggle for existence mammoths
in Siberia disappeared and martens were victorious. But this does
not mean, of course, that martens were braver than mammoths
and exterminated the latter in open fight with the help of their
teeth and paws. In a similar way the Jewish nation, which is
comparatively small and was disarmed long ago, has proved to be
unconquerable in the struggle for existence, whilst many centuries
of military successes did not save from downfall the huge Roman
Empire, as well as other warlike states that had preceded it.

Just as the struggle for existence is independent of war and
carried on by methods which have nothing in common with
fighting, so, on the other hand, war has grounds of its own
distinct from the struggle for the means of livelihood. If the latter
were the only ground of war, the primitive epoch of history would
have been the most peaceful of all. For men were then few in
number, their demands were of the simplest, and each had ample
room for satisfying them. Fighting and mutual extermination
would in that case involve great risks and bring no advantages.
In this respect the normal issue of all quarrels suggested itself
naturally. " And Abraham said unto Lot, Let there be no strife,
I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and
thy herdmen ; for we be brethren (ki anashtm achim anachnu}. Is
not the whole land before thee ? Separate thyself, I pray thee,
from me : if thou wilt take the left hand, then I will go to the
right ; or if thou depart to the right hand, then I will go to the
left. And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of
Jordan, that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord
destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord,
like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. Then Lot
chose him all the plain of Jordan ; and Lot journeyed east :
and they separated themselves the one from the other "
(Gen. xiii. 8-n).

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 389

If such friendly agreement was, however, but a rare occur
rence in those days, and, speaking generally, the mutual relations of
primitive humanity were more like ' bellum omnium contra omnes,'
according to the well-known theory of Hobbes, this was due, not
to the inevitable struggle for existence, but to the free play of evil
passions. The fratricide with which history begins was caused by
envy and not by hunger. And the most ancient poetical work that
has been handed down — the savage song of Lamech, a grandson
of Cain, recorded in the Bible — bears witness not to material need
but to savage malice, vindictiveness and ferocious pride. "And
Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice ;
ye wives of Lamech,' hearken unto my speech : for I have slain a
man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. If Cain
shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold "
(Gen. iv. 23, 24).

Ill

The predominance of such feelings at a time when the human
race, multiplying slowly as compared with the majority of other
animals, was small in number, would have menaced it with speedy
extermination were not the war of all against all counterbalanced
from the first by the tie of kinship. This tie has its root in the
maternal instinct, is developed by means of family feelings and
relations, and receives its final sanction in the religion of ancestor-
worship. The kinship-group organisation (in the wide sense1),
which resulted from all these circumstances, may be regarded as the
primitive stage in the historical development of humanity, which
had never consisted of separate isolated entities at war with one
another. The tie of kinship had existed from the first, and the
c war of all against all ' expresses the mutual relation not between
separate individuals, but between distinct groups, each of which was
held together by kinship. This does not mean, of course, that each
clan was as a fact at continual war with other clans, but only that
no clan was secure against, or protected from, the possibility of
war with any other clan. This state of things, however, could not
be permanent. It was only in rare cases that war between clans
ended in the extermination of the weaker. Given a certain

1 See above, Chap. X.

390 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

equality of power, the issue of war was a treaty or contract
sanctioned by religion. On the other hand, the weaker groups,
to avoid extermination in an unequal struggle, either severally
joined a stronger clan and became subordinate to it, or many of
them together formed a federated union. Thus war itself gave
rise to rights and treaties as a security of peace. Such unions of
tribes are the beginning of the state.

At the period with which continuous historical records begin
for us, a considerable part of humanity was already organised into
states. There were two fundamental types of state : the Western
or Hellenic republic^ i.e. a small city commune, and the Eastern
despotic monarchy^ an extensive organisation embracing either one
(as in Egypt) or many nations (the so-called world empires).

Without the state there could be no progress in human culture,
based upon a complex co-operation of many forces. Such co
operation was impossible to any large extent for disconnected
tribes, at constant blood-feud with one another. In the state we
find human masses for the first time in history acting in concord.
War has already been banished from within these masses and
transferred to the wider circumference of the state. In the primi
tive social group all grown-up men are always under arms. In
the state warriors either form a special caste or profession, or, in
the case of conscription, military service is merely a temporary
occupation of the citizens. The organisation of war by the state
is the first great step towards the establishment of peace. This is
particularly clear in the history of large states built up by conquest —
the so-called world empires. Each conquest meant in this case
the spreading of peace, that is, a widening of the circle within
which war ceased to be a normal event and became a criminal feud
— a rare and reprehensible accident. 'The world empires'
undoubtedly strove, though only half consciously, to give peace
to the world by subjugating all nations to one common power.
The greatest of the states founded upon conquest, the Roman
Empire, directly described itself as peace — c pax Romano?

But the older monarchies also aimed at the same thing.
Inscriptions of the Assyrian and Persian kings, discovered in the
nineteenth century, leave no doubt that these conquerors con
sidered it their true vocation to subdue all nations for the sake of
establishing peace on earth, though their conception of the task

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 391

and of the means of fulfilling it was, as a rule, much too simple.
More complex and more fruitful were the world-wide historical
plans of the Macedonian Empire, which rested upon the superior
power of Hellenic culture deeply and firmly rooted among the
conquered races of the East. The idea of universal and eternal
peace became perfectly definite among the Romans, who firmly
believed that they were destined to subjugate the universe to the
power of one single law. This idea was particularly dwelt upon
by Vergil. Apart from the well-known l tu regere imperio
populos,' etc.,

But Rome ! 'tis thine alone, with awful sway
To rule mankind and make the world obey.
Disposing peace and war thy own majestic way
To tame the proud, the fetter 'd slave to free —

he returns to it at every opportunity in his Aene'id^ as the inspiring
motive of the whole poem. Thus, for instance, he represents
Jupiter as saying to Venus about her descendants :

" The people Romans call, the city Rome.
To them no bounds of empire I assign,
Nor term of years to their immortal line. . . .
Then dire debate, and impious war, shall cease,
And the stern age be softened into peace.
Then banish'd faith shall once again return,
And Vestal fires in hallow'd temples burn ;
And Remus with Quirinus shall sustain
The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain."

Aeneid i. 278-294.

The same god tells Mercury that the ancestor of the Romans,
Aeneas, is destined to conquer Italy throbbing with war, and to
instal in power the noble line of the Teucre, who 'shall on the
conquered world impose the law' {Aeneid iv. 229-231).

In comparing the four 'world empires' we find that as they
succeeded one another they gradually approached the ideal of
universal peace both from the point of view of their extension
and of their inner principles. The first empire, the Assyro-
Babylonian, did not extend beyond near Asia, was supported by
constant devastating wars, and its legislation was limited to
military decrees. The second empire, that of Cyrus and the
Achaemenides, added to the near Asia a considerable part of
Central Asia on the one hand and extended to Egypt on the

392 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

other ; its inner force was the light religion of Ormuzd, which
sanctioned morality and justice. In the third empire, that of
Alexander and his successors, historical East was for the first
time united to historical West, and the two were welded to
gether not merely by the force of the sword but also by the
ideal elements of hellenic culture. Finally, the progress made by
the fourth — the Roman Empire, consisted both in the fact that
Romans extended the former unity as far as the Atlantic Ocean,
and that they gave it a firm political organisation and a stable
juridical form. War was inevitably the means and the armed
powers the necessary support of this work of establishing peace.
War and peace were correctly symbolised by the opposed but
inseparable faces of the Roman god Janus.

War unites more powerfully than anything else the inner
forces of each of the warring states and at the same time proves
to be the condition for subsequent coming together and mutual
interpenetration of the opponents themselves. This is most
clearly seen in the history of Greece. It was only three times
in the course of their history that the majority of independent
Greek tribes and city-states united for the sake of a. common
cause and manifested their inner national unity in a practical
way — and every time it was due to a war : the Trojan war at
the beginning, the Persian wars in the middle, and the expedition
of Alexander the Great as the culminating achievement, owing to
which the creations of the national genius of Greece finally
became the common property of humanity.

The Trojan war established the Greek element in Asia
Minor, where, nurtured by other civilising influences, it blossomed
out for the first time. It was on the shores of Asia Minor that
Greek poetry was born (the Homeric epos) and that the most
ancient school of their philosophy arose and developed (Thales
of Miletus, Heracleitus of Ephesus). The quickening of the
united national forces in the struggle with the Persians gave rise
to another and a still more rich manifestation of the creative
genius of the Greeks. And the conquests of Alexander, throwing
as they did these ripe seeds of Hellenism on to the ancient soil
of civilised Asia and Egypt, produced that great Hellene-oriental
synthesis of religious and philosophical ideas which, together
with the subsequent unity established by the Roman Empire, was

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 393

the necessary historical condition for the spread of Christianity.
Without the Greek language and Greek ideas, as well as without
the ' Roman peace ' and Roman military roads, the work of
preaching the Gospel could not have been accomplished so quickly
as it was and on so wide a scale. The Greek words and ideas
became common property solely thanks to the warlike Alexander
and his generals ; the Roman 4 peace ' was attained through many
centuries of wars, and was guarded by legions ; and it was
for these legions that the roads were made along which walked
the apostles. 'Throughout the earth their voice was heard and
to the ends of the world their words went forth,' sings the
Church. This c earth,' these c ends of the world,' were no other
than the wide circle (orbls) which Rome drew round itself with
its blood-stained sword.

Thus all the wars in which ancient history abounds served
to increase the sphere of peace. The heathen c kingdoms of the
beast1 prepared the way for the messengers proclaiming the
kingdom of the Son of man.

Apart from this, however, the military history of antiquity shows
important progress in the direction of peace in another respect.
Not only did war serve the purposes of peace ; as time went on,
lesser and lesser numbers of active military forces were required
for the attainment of these purposes, while the peaceful results
became, on the contrary, more and more important and far-
reaching. This paradoxical fact is beyond dispute. In order
to take Troy it was necessary for almost all the Greek population
to be under arms for a period of ten years,1 and the direct result
of this terrible effort was next to nothing. But to accomplish
the great catastrophe — the conquest of the East by Alexander the
Great, which crowned the whole of the Greek history and had
immediate consequences for the civilisation of the world, all that
was needed from the military point of view was a three-year long
expedition of an army of thirteeen thousand men. If we compare
the results and, on the other hand, take into account the total
population of Greece and Macedon under Alexander and the

1 The number of Greek forces given in the Iliad cannot, of course, be taken as
literally exact, but as an approximate estimate. This number (110,000 men) seems to
be entirely probable. It should be noted with reference to the Iliad generally that
recent excavations have re-established the historical value of the poem, allowing, of
course, for its mythological setting.

394 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

small number of the Achaean population which sent to Troy so
large a contingent of military force, we shall be struck by the
relative diminution that has taken place in the course of these
seven centuries in the number of lives that had to be sacrificed
for the attainment of historical purposes. Another comparison
leads to the same conclusion. The Persian Empire, whose
millions of soldiers could not secure to it military success in the
struggle with tiny Greece, was hardly able to exist for two
centuries. The Roman Empire, three times as great and with a
population of at least 200 millions, kept under arms some 400
thousand legionaries to defend its endless frontiers, and existed
three times as long as the kingdom of Darius and Xerxes. And
how immeasurably more important to humanity were the blessings
of culture guarded by those few legions than the objects for the sake
of which gathered the innumerable hordes of the king of kings !
The nature of military progress exemplified in the advantages of
the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion over the Persian
hordes, consisted, generally speaking, in the preponderance of
quality over quantity and of form over matter. It was at the
same time a great moral and social progress, since it led to an
enormous decrease in the number of human lives swallowed up
by war.

IV

When the Roman world — and peace — came to be replaced
by the Christian, the problem of war remained essentially un
changed on its externally historical side. True, by its absolute
condemnation of all hatred and enmity, Christianity abolished the
principle, the moral root of war. But cutting down the roots
does not mean felling the tree ; and indeed the preachers of the
Gospel did not wish to fell this Nebuchadnezzar's tree, for they
knew that the earth needed its shade until out of the small seed
of true faith there would grow up, to replace it, c the greatest of
plants,' under the boughs of which there would be secure shelter
both for men and beasts of the field.

The teachers of Christianity did not reject the state and its
destination to c bear the sword against the wicked,' and therefore
they did not reject war. The followers of the new faith saw
great triumph in the fact that two victorious wars allowed

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 395

Caesar Constantine to plant the cross of Christ over the old
unchanged building of the Roman Empire. Under the unchanged
external appearance of the state, however, secret spiritual forces
were at work. The state, even when surmounted by the cross,
ceased for the Christian to be the supreme good and the final
form of life. Faith in the eternal Rome, that is, in the absolute
significance of political unity, was replaced by the expectation of
'the new Jerusalem,' that is, of the inner spiritual union of
regenerated men and nations. Apart, however, from human
consciousness being thus ideally raised to a higher level, the
process of external realisation of unity in the body of humanity
continued unceasingly, though at first slowly.

The Christian world (tota christianitas^ toute la chretient/),
which in the Middle Ages took the place of the ancient Roman
Empire, was considerably wider than it. True, there were
frequent wars within it — just as in the Roman Empire there had
been insurrections of peoples and mutinies of military leaders ;
but the representatives of the Christian principles looked upon
these wars as upon lamentable feuds, and in every way tried to
put a stop to them. As to the constant struggle between the
Christian and the Mahommedan world (in Spain and the Levant),
it undoubtedly was in the interests of progress and culture. The
defence of Christianity against the advance of Islam preserved for
historical humanity the possibility of higher spiritual development
which was in danger of being submerged by the comparatively
lower religious principle.1 Besides, the interaction between the
two worlds, though based on hostility, could not be limited to
bloodshed alone and gradually led to a widening of the intellectual
horizon on both sides. It thus prepared the ground in the case of
Christians for the great epoch of the Renaissance of arts and
learning, and later on for the Reformation.

In modern history three general facts have the most important
bearing upon the question we are considering — namely, (i) the
development of nationality ; (2) the corresponding development of
international relations of all kinds ; and (3) the extension of the
unity of culture to the whole of the globe.

Having freed themselves from the tutelage of the Roman
Church, and rejected the impotent pretensions of the holy Roman

1 See above, Part III., Chap. V.

396 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Empire, European nations became differentiated into independent
political wholes. Each national state recognised itself and was
recognised by others as a perfect body^ as possessed, z.<?., of supreme
authority or absolute fulness of power and therefore as un
subordinated to any other power on earth. The direct consequences
of this national segregation were not favourable to the cause of
peace. In the first place, it legitimised war even among Christian
states, since war proved to be the sole means of settling disputes
between separate and absolutely independent wholes which had no
supreme arbiter to appeal to, after the manner in which in the
Middle Ages they always could, and sometimes did, appeal to the
Pope and to the Emperor. Secondly, the national idea, when taken
to be the supreme principle in the life of nations, naturally became
national pride ; patriotism lost its true character ; active love for one's
own people became idolatrous worship of it as of the supreme good,
and this in its turn passed into hatred and contempt for other nations,
and led to unjust aggressive wars and oppression of other peoples.
Concealed by these negative features, however, lies the positive
significance of nationality. Nations must live and develop in
their essential peculiarities as the living organs of humanity ; apart
from them its unity would be dead and devoid of content, and
this peace of death would be worse than war. The true unity of
mankind and the hoped-for peace must be based not upon the
weakness and subjugation of nations but upon the highest develop
ment of their powers and a free interaction between nationalities
which serve as a complement to one another. And in spite of all
the efforts of national selfishn'ess which strives to bring about
hostile estrangement between nations, positive interaction among
them exists, and is constantly increasing in depth and in breadth.
The former international relations have not disappeared but have
gained in inner force, and new ones have been added to them.
Thus in the West the Roman Church, in spite of losing its external
power, has considerately gained in spiritual authority ; it has been
purged of many of the crude abuses of the Middle Ages, and has
made good by other conquests the damage it deservedly suffered
at the hands of the Reformation. By the side of this Church
and in opposition to it arose the equally wide-embracing and
powerful brotherhood of the freemasons, which, however enigmatic
it may be in other respects, is unquestionably international and

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 397

universal in character. Relations of another kind came to be
established on an unprecedented scale in the economic sphere.
World-market came into existence. There is not a single country
which is economicallyse]f-sufficient,producingeverything necessary
for itself, getting nothing from others and giving them nothing
in return, so that the idea of the state as ' a perfect body,' i.e. an
absolutely independent social organism, proves in this fundamental
respect to be the purest fiction. Further, constant co-operation of
all educated countries in scientific and technical work, the results of
which immediately become common property; inventions whereby
distance is annulled ; the daily press, with its continual news from
everywhere ; finally, the remarkable increase in the international
4 exchange of substances ' by the new means of communication —
all this makes civilised humanity one whole which actually, even
though involuntarily, lives one common life.

And civilised humanity tends more and more to become the
whole of humanity. When at the beginning of modern history
Europeans extended their activity on all sides, taking America
in the West, India in the South-east, and Siberia in the North
east, the greater part of the globe proved to be in their power.
Now this power may be said to have extended to the whole of the
globe. The Mahommedan world is surrounded and permeated
through and through with European culture, and it is only in the
tropical deserts of the Soudan that it can, and that without any
hope of success, maintain its primitive independence (the kingdom
of the Dervishes). The whole of the African coast has been
divided between European Powers, and now the centre of the
black continent has become the arena of their rivalry. Mongolian \
Asia — China and Japan — had alone remained outside the boundary
of European influence, but this last barrier between human races
is being removed before our eyes. With astonishing success and
rapidity the Japanese, in the course of a quarter of a century,
acquired all the material and positively scientific side of European
civilisation and then at once proceeded to prove to their Mongolian
brethren, in the most convincing way possible, the necessity or
following their example. The Chinese, who had already been
shaken in their self-confidence by the English, but were still
rather slow at understanding these foreigners, understood a fellow-
nation at once : and henceforth the famous wall of China is no

398 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

longer a symbol of a continuing isolation but only a relic of the
irrevocable past.

We must now consider what bearing this curious process
of * gathering together of lands ' by means of a single material
culture had upon war. On the one hand, war played an
active part in it. The wars of the Revolution and the
Napoleonic wars are well known to have had a powerful influence
upon the advance and the dissemination of universally-European
ideas which conditioned the scientific, technical, and economic
progress of the nineteenth century and thus brought about the
material unification of humanity. In a similar way the final
act of that unification — its extension to the last stronghold of
isolated barbarism, China — began, in our eyes, with war and not
with peaceful persuasion. On the other hand, the universality
of material culture, realised partly through means of war, itself
becomes a powerful means and ground of peace. At the present
time the enormous majority of the population of the globe
constitutes one connected body, between the parts of which
there is physical, if not moral, solidarity. This solidarity
shows itself in the sphere from which none can escape — the
economic sphere. Some industrial crisis in New York im
mediately makes itself felt in Moscow and Calcutta. The body
of humanity has evolved a common sense-organ (sensorium
commune\ owing to which every particular stimulus sensibly
produces a general effect.

Every prolonged and serious war is inevitably accompanied
by profound economic disturbances which are bound to be world
wide^ now that the different parts of the earth have become so
closely connected. This state of things was being evolved
throughout the nineteenth century, though it became clear to
all only at the end of it. It is a sufficient foundation for the fear
of war^ completely unknown in earlier times, which has now
taken possession of all civilised nations. During the first half
of the century wars became shorter and more rare. Between
Waterloo and Sebastopol, Europe had forty years of peace — a
thing which had not happened during the whole of its previous
history. Later on, special historical causes brought about several
comparatively short European wars in 1859, 1864, 1866, and
1870; the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78 could not be made

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 399

into a general European war. The most important of these
wars — the Franco-Prussian — is very characteristic. It left in the
most civilised nation of Europe a feeling of national injury and
a thirst for vengeance — and yet for the last twenty-eight years
these feelings have not been able to pass into action solely from
fear of war. In the seventeenth or eighteenth century, not
to speak of epochs more remote, such prudence would have been
quite inconceivable. And what do the monstrous armaments of
European countries indicate if not the terrible, overwhelming
fear of war, and consequently the approaching end of wars ? l

It would be irrational, however, to think and to act as
though that approaching end had already come. Although the
common economic sensorium does at present unite all the parts
of the earth with a tie of which the people themselves are
conscious, yet this tie is not everywhere of the same strength and
the parts are not all equally sensitive. There are still some
nations left which in the case of a world war risk little — and
there are some which are prepared to risk a great deal. The
introduction of the Mongolian race into the sphere of the
material European culture has a twofold significance. This
race, the chief representatives of which, the Chinese people,
number at least two hundred million souls, are noted for great
racial pride and extreme contempt for life, both their own and
other people's. It is more than probable that the now inevitable
acquisition of the technique of European culture by the yellow
race will only serve it as a means for proving in a decisive
struggle the superiority of its spiritual powers over the spiritual
powers of Europe. This forthcoming armed struggle between
Europe and Mongolian Asia will certainly be the last war,
but it will on that account be all the more terrible. It will
indeed be a world war, and it is not a matter of indifference to
the destinies of humanity which side will prove victorious.

There is a wonderful system and unity in the general
history of human wars, the chief moments of which I have

1 The three last half-European wars do not contradict this statement. The Servo-
Bulgarian war of 1885, the Greco-Turkish of 1897, and the Spanish-American of 1898
all came to an end before they had really begun.

400 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

indicated. From the rosy mist of historical childhood there
stands out in the first place the clear though half-fantastical
image of the Trojan war — that first great encounter of East
and West, of Europe and Asia. This is how Herodotus regarded
the Trojan war, with which his history begins ; and it is not
for nothing that the first inspired work of purely human poetry
(the Iliad] is connected with it too. This war was indeed the
beginning of the earthly, worldly history of humanity which
throughout its course turns round the fateful struggle between
East and West, while its arena is becoming wider and wider. Now
that arena has reached its utmost limit — the whole surface of
the globe. In the place of the deserted Skamander there is the
Pacific Ocean, in the place of the smoking Troy — the ominous
mass of China, and the struggle is still as before between the
opposing principles of East and West. There was a moment
of crisis, a pause in the struggle, when, following upon the
external union of the historical East with the West in the Roman
Empire — under the power of the descendants of Aeneas of Troy,
— the light of Christianity abolished the ancient hostility from

within :

And streaming afar the light that came

Out of the East arose,

And glimmering with portent and celestial power

It reconciled East and West.

But the old material and cultural union proved to be unstable,
and the spiritual is still awaiting its final realisation. True,
in the place of the political unity of the Roman Empire, modern
humanity has evolved another unity — the economic one, which,
like the first, puts great external obstacles in the way of armed
struggle. But these obstacles which have of late saved us from
a European war are unable to prevent the last and the greatest
struggle between the two worlds — of Europe and of Asia.
These now are no longer represented by separate peoples, such
as the Acheans and the Trojans, or even the Greeks and the
Persians, but appear in their true proportions as the two great
and hostile halves into which the whole of humanity is divided.
The victory of one side or another will indeed give peace to the
whole world. There will be no more struggle between nations ;
but the question still remains whether this political peace, this

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 401

establishment of international unity in -the shape of a world
empire — be it a monarchy or some other form of state, — will indeed
mean a real and lasting peace, whether it will stop the struggle
— sometimes an armed struggle — between other, non-political
elements of humanity. Or, maybe, it will simply be a repeti
tion on a vast scale of what has happened, within our memory,
in more narrow limits. Germany had once consisted of many
states at war with one another. The national body suffered from
lack of real unity, and the creation of such a unity was the
cherished dream of the patriots. It came to be realised after
several wars — and it proved to be insufficient. The Germans, of
course, will never relinquish their political unity, but they clearly
see that it was only one necessary step forward and not the
attainment of the supreme goal. The political struggle between
small states came to be replaced throughout the empire by a
more deep-rooted struggle — religious and economical. The
Ultramontanes and the social democrats are proving to be more
formidable foes than the Austrian and the French. When the
whole of humanity is politically united, whether in the form of
a world empire or a world-wide federation of states, the question
still remains whether such union will put an end to the struggle
of freemasonry with clericalism, or appease the hostility of
socialism against the propertied classes and of anarchism against
all social and political organisation. It is clear that the struggle
between religious beliefs and material interests survives the
struggle between states and nations, and that the final establish
ment of external political unity will clearly show its inner
insufficiency. It will make plain the moral truth that external
peace is not necessarily a true good in itself and that it becomes
a good only in connection with an inner regeneration of
humanity. And it is only when the insufficiency of external
union will have been known by experience and not merely in
theory that the time will be ripe for spiritualising the united
body of the universe, and for realising in it the Kingdom of
Truth and of Eternal Peace.

2 D

402 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

VI

War, as we have seen, has been the chief historical means of
bringing about the external political unification of humanity-
Wars between clans and tribes led to the formation of the state
which abolished war within its own limits. External wars
between separate states gave rise to vaster and more complex
political bodies possessing a unity of culture, and seeking to
establish peace and equilibrium within their limits. At one time
the whole mass Of humanity, broken up and divided, was per
meated through and through with war which never ceased
between innumerable small groups. War was everywhere ; but
gradually driven further and further back it now appears to be an
almost inevitable danger at one point only — at the dividing line
between the two chief races into which historical humanity is
divided. The process of unification is drawing towards its end,
but that end has not yet come. It is extremely improbable that
the yellow race will peacefully enter within the circle of European
culture, and, from the historical point of view, there is no reason
to believe that war is to be immediately and completely abolished.
Is, however, this point of view binding upon the moral conscious
ness ?

The matter appears as follows : " Whatever the historical
significance of war may be, it is in the first place murder of
men by men. But our conscience condemns murder, and there
fore we ought conscientiously tp refuse to take any part in war,
and ought to persuade others to do the same. To spread such a
view by word and example is the true and the only certain means
of abolishing war, since it is clear that when every one refuses
to do military service, war will become impossible." In order
that this argument might be convincing, it would have in the
first place to be proved that war and even military service is the
same as murder. But this is not the case. Military service
means only a possibility of war. During the forty years between
the wars of Napoleon I. and Napoleon III. several million men
in Europe underwent military training, but only an insignificant
part of them had actual experience of war. Even when war does
break out, however, it cannot be reduced to murder, that is, to a

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 403

crime which presupposes evil intention directed upon a certain
object, upon this particular man whose life I take. In war the
individual soldier has, generally speaking, no such intention,
especially with the present method of fighting by means of guns
and cannons against an enemy who is too far off to be seen. Only
in cases of actual hand-to-hand fighting does the question of con
science arise for the individual, and then it must be decided by
each according to his conscience. Speaking generally, war as a
conflict between collective organisms (states) and their collective
organs (armies) is not the work of individuals who play a passive
part in it, and for them possible murder is accidental only.

It might be said, however, that it is better to avoid the very
possibility of accidental murder by refusing to do military service.
This is undoubtedly true if it is a question of free choice. A
man who has attained a certain level of moral consciousness, or
one whose feeling of pity is strongly developed, will certainly
not choose the army as a profession, but will prefer to follow a
peaceful calling. But so far as compulsory military service re
quired by the state is concerned, it must be admitted that so long
as it exists a refusal on the part of the individual to submit to it
is a greater evil than the institution itself, however much we may
disapprove of the modern system of universal military service, the
disadvantages of which are obvious and the efficiency doubtful.
The person who refuses to serve his time in the army knows that
the requisite number of recruits will in any case be gathered and
that somebody else will be called in his stead. Therefore he con
sciously forces his neighbour, who would otherwise be free, to all
the hardships of military service. Besides, the whole meaning
of such a refusal satisfies the demands neither of logic nor of
morality, since this is what it comes to. For the sake of
avoiding a remote future possibility of accidentally killing an
enemy in a war which will not depend upon me, I myself declare
war to the state now and compel its representatives to take a
number of violent measures against me at once^ in order that I
might save myself from committing problematic and accidental
violence in the unknown future.

The purpose of military service is defined in our law by
the formula cto defend the throne and the fatherland,' that is,
the political whole to which a given individual belongs. The

404 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

state may, as it often has done in the past, abuse its armed forces,
and, instead of self-defence, undertake unjust and aggressive wars ;
but this is not a sufficient ground for determining my own
present actions. Such actions must be solely determined by my
own moral duties and not by those of others. The question then
in the last resort comes to this : Is it my moral duty to take part in
the defence of my country ?

Theories which take up an absolutely negative attitude
towards war and maintain that it is the duty of every one to refuse
the demand of the state for military service, altogether deny that
the individual has any duties towards the state. From their point
of view the state is simply a band of brigands who hypnotise the
crowd in order to keep it in subjection and to use it for their own
purposes. But seriously to believe that this account exhausts or
in the least expresses the true nature of the case would be altogether
too nal've. This view is particularly ill-founded when it appeals
to Christianity.

Christianity has revealed to us our absolute dignity, the un
conditional worth of the inner being or of the soul of man. This
unconditional worth imposes upon us an unconditional duty — to
realise the good in the whole of our life, both personal and
collective. We know for certain that this task is impossible for
the individual taken separately or in isolation, and that it can only
be realised if the individual life finds its completion in the universal
historical life of humanity. One of the means of such comple
tion, one of the forms of the universal life — at the present moment
of history the chief and the dominant form — is the father/and
definitely organised as the state. This form is not, of course, the
supreme and final expression of human solidarity, and the father
land must not be put in the place of God and of His universal
kingdom. But from the fact that the state is not everything, it
by no means follows that it is unnecessary and that it would be
right to aim at abolishing it.

Suppose that the country in which I live is visited by a
calamity such as famine. What is in this case the duty of the
individual as an unconditionally moral being ? Both reason and
conscience clearly say that he must do one of two things — either
feed all the hungry or himself die of starvation. It is impossible
for me to feed millions who are starving, and yet my conscience

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 405

does not in the least reproach me for remaining alive. Now this
is naturally due to the fact that the state takes upon itself my
moral duty to provide bread for all the starving, and that it can
fulfil it owing to its collective resources and to its organisation
intended for prompt action on a wide scale. In this case the
state proves to be an institution which can successfully perform
work that is morally binding but physically impossible for the
individual. If, however, the state fulfils for me my direct moral
duties, it cannot be said that I owe nothing to it and that it has
no claim upon me. If it had not been for it I would have been
in conscience bound to give my very life ; can I then refuse to
contribute my small share towards the means which it needs for
carrying out my own work ?

But, it will be said, the rates and taxes collected by the state
may be expended upon things which appear to me to be useless,
and even pernicious, instead of upon obviously useful work. In
that case it will be my duty to expose such abuses, but certainly
not to deny, by word and deed, the very principle of taxation by
the state, the recognised destination of which is to serve the
general welfare.

Now the military organisation of the state is really based upon
the same principle. If savages such as the Caucasian mountaineers
of the old days, or the Kurds and the Black Flags of the present
times, attack a traveller with the obvious intention of murdering
him and his family, it is no doubt his duty to fight them — not out
of hostility or malice against them, not to save his life at the ex
pense of his neighbour's life, but to save the defenceless beings
entrusted to his protection. To help others in such circumstances
is an absolute moral duty, and it cannot be limited to one's own
family. But successfully to defend all the weak and innocent
against the attacks of evil-doers is impossible for isolated individuals
or even for groups of many men. Collective organisation of such
defence is precisely the destination of the military force of the
state, and to support the state in one way or another in this work
of pity is the moral duty of every one, which no abuses can render
void. Just as the fact that ergot is poisonous does not prove that
rye is injurious, so the burdens and the dangers of militarism
are no evidence against the necessity of armed forces.

The military or indeed any compulsory organisation .is not

406 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

an evil, but a consequence and a symptom of evil. There was
no trace of such an organisation at the time when the innocent
shepherd Abel was killed by his brother out of malice. Justly
fearing lest the same thing should happen to Seth and other
peaceful men, the guardian angels of humanity mixed the clay
with copper and iron and created the soldier and the policeman.
And until Cain's feelings disappear from the hearts of men, soldier
and policeman will be a good and not an evil. Hostility against
the state and its representatives is, after all, hostility — and this fact
would alone be sufficient to justify the necessity of the state. And
it is strange, indeed, to be hostile to it for the sole reason that the
state merely limits by external means and does not inwardly abolish
in the whole world the malice which we are unable to abolish in
ourselves !

VII

Between the historical necessity of war on the one hand, and
the abstract denial of it on the other, lies the duty of the indi
vidual to the organised whole — the state — which, down to the
end of history, conditions both the existence and the progress
of humanity. The unquestionable fact, however, that the state
possesses the means both for preserving human society in its
present condition, and also for moving it forward, imposes upon
the individual other duties with regard to the state than a mere
fulfilment of its lawful demands. Such fulfilment would be suffi
cient were the state a perfect embodiment of the normal social
order. But since in truth it is only the condition and the means
of human progress, and is itself gradually" becoming more perfect
in different respects, it is the duty of the individual to take, so
much as in him lies, active part in this general political progress.
The individual is the bearer of the absolute moral consciousness,
of the perfect ideal of truth and peace, or of the kingdom of God.
This consciousness he received, not from the state, but from above
and from within. The ideal, however, cannot be actually realised
in the collective life of humanity except by means of a preparatory
state organisation. Hence for every individual who really adopts
the moral point of view there follows the direct positive duty of
helping the state by persuasion or preaching to fulfil in the best
possible way its preliminary function. After this function has

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF WAR 407

been discharged — but not until then — the state itself will of course
become superfluous. The individual both can and must thus in
fluence society both with reference to war and to all other aspects
of the political life.

The evil of war is in the extreme hostility and hatred between
the disjecta membra of humanity. In personal relations bad feelings
are not justified by any one, and it is useless to denounce them.
In the case of international hatred, however, the bad feeling is
usually associated with false opinions and erroneous reasoning,
and is indeed often created by them. To struggle against this
deception is the first duty of every man who truly desires to bring
humanity nearer to a good peace.

As to the future decisive struggle between Europe and Asia,
probable as it is, it does not threaten us as an unavoidable impend
ing doom. The future is still in our hands. The first condition
which could render the peaceful inclusion of the Mongolian race
within the circle of Christian culture possible — though not very
probable — is that the Christian nations should themselves become
more Christian, and that in all relations of the collective life they
should be more guided by moral principles than by shameful selfish
ness and evil economic and religious hostility.

Not long ago at the world congress of religion in Chicago
some Asiatic men — Buddhists and Brahmanists — addressed the
Europeans with the following words, expressive of the popular
opinion of the East : " You send to us missionaries to preach
your religion. We do not deny its merits, but having got to
know you during the last two centuries we see that your whole
life is opposed to the demands of your faith. You are moved, not
by the spirit of love and truth which your God revealed to you,
but by the spirit of greed and violence, natural to all bad people.
It must then be one of two things : either your religion, in spite
of its inner excellence, cannot be practically realised, and therefore
is of no use even to you who profess it ; or you are so bad that
you do not want to fulfil the demands which you can and you
ought to fulfil. In either case you have no advantage over us
and you should leave us in peace." The only convincing answer
to this criticism are deeds and not words. Asia would be neither
justified in fighting nor capable of conquering a Europe that was
inwardly united and truly Christian.

4o8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

War has been the direct means of the external and the indirect
means of the inward unification of humanity. Reason forbids us
to give up this weapon so long as it is needed, but conscience
compels us to strive that it should be needed no longer^ and that
the natural organisation of the human race divided into hostile
parts should really become a moral or spiritual organisation.
Such an organisation has its source in the nature of man, is in
wardly based upon the absolute good, and attains complete
realisation through means of the world history. The description
of this moral organisation, or of the totality of the moral condi
tions which justify the good in the world, must be the coping-
stone of moral philosophy.

CHAPTER X

THE MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY AS A WHOLE

THE natural organisation of humanity consists in the fact that
different individuals and groups are compelled by nature to inter
act in such a way that their private needs and activities lead to
results of universal significance and to comparative progress of the
whole. Thus from ancient times the needs of the shepherds and
the agriculturists, the warlike spirit of the chieftains, and the self-
interested enterprise of the merchants created material culture
and were the means of historical progress. This natural arrange
ment, owing to which private interests lead to the common good,
expresses a certain real unity of the human race. But this unity
is both inwardly and outwardly imperfect. It is outwardly im
perfect because, as a fact, it is incomplete ; it is imperfect in
wardly because it is not the object of the conscious will of the
individuals and the groups which enter into it. Such unconscious
and involuntary solidarity is already found in the pre-human
world in the unity of the genus and the development of organic
species. To advance no further is unworthy of man in whom
the objective and generic reason — the universal predicate of
nature — becomes the individual subject. What is needed is a
moral, conscious, and voluntary organisation of humanity for the
sake of, and inspired by, the all-embracing good. It became the
direct object and purpose of life and thought from the moment
when, in the middle of the historical development, this good was
revealed as absolute and complete. Unity in the good means
not only a coexistence of private interests and actions and a
harmony between them in the general result, but a direct co-

409

410 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

fellowship of individuals and of social groups in unanimous striving
to attain a universal purpose — it means that absolute perfection
is taken and understood by each as his own purpose.

The purpose of the moral organisation of human life is to
realise the absolute norm of the good or of the active (practical)
perfection, and the life as morally organised may be defined as
the process of growing perfect. This logically involves the
question, Who is growing perfect ? i.e. the question as to the
subject of the moral organisation. We know that isolated in
dividuals do not exist and therefore do not grow in perfection.
The true subject of the moral progress — as well as of the
' historical progress in general — is the individual man together with
and inseparably from the collective man or society. Not every
configuration of molecules forms a living cell, and not every con
glomeration of cells forms a living being. Similarly not every
gathering of individual men or of social groups constitutes a true
and living bearer of the moral organisation. In order to possess
such a significance, i.e. in order to be an organic complement of
the moral personality, the collective whole must be no less real
than the individual, and, in this sense, must possess the same
worth and the same rights as the latter.

The natural groups which actually widen the life of the
individual are the family, the_jiatiojj, and humanity — the three
abiding stages in the development of the collective man. Corre
sponding to them we have in the historical order the kinship-group
stage, the nationally-political stage, and the spiritually universal
stage. The latter may only be revealed on condition that the
first two become spiritualised.

It will be asked whether the family is to form part of the
final and universal organisation of morality or whether it is
simply a transitory limitation in the development of human life.
But the individual person in his given condition and in his selfish
striving for exclusive separateness is also only a transitory stage,
just like the nation or even humanity itself. It is not a question of
idealising and preserving for all eternity the corruptible aspect of
this or that living subject, but of discovering and setting aglow
the spark of divinity hidden under the corruption, of finding the
absolute and eternal significance inherent in the conditional and
the temporal, and of affirming it not as a fixed idea only, but

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 411

as the beginning of fulfilment, as a token of perfection. The
positive elements of life in their relative and temporary manifesta
tions must be understood and recognised as conditional data for the
solution of an unconditional problem. In the case of the family these
natural data are the three generations successively connected by
the fact of birth : grandparents, parents, and grandchildren.
The continuous and the relative character of the bond does not
abolish its triple character as an abiding norm. The members of
the series which extend beyond it on either side — great-grand
parents and great-grandchildren — constitute no independent
element in the idea of the family relation. The supreme task
is to spiritualise the relative natural connection of the three
generations and to make it unconditionally moral. This purpose
is achieved in three] ways — through family religion, marriage,
and the bringing up of children.

II

*

Family religion is the most ancient, deeply rooted, and stable
institution of humanity. It has survived the patriarchal stage
and all the religious and political changes. The object of family
religion is the older generation, the departed fathers or forefathers.
According to the most ancient ideas, the forefathers must
necessarily be dead j this was so inevitable that, by a natural pro
cess of thought, all the dead, independently of their age and sex,
were called forefathers (the Lithuanian and Polish dziady — a relic
of remote antiquity). If a real grandfather happened to live too
long, it was out of order, it violated the religiously moral norm,
which, however, was easily re-established by the voluntary sacrifice
of the old man. This barbarous practice really contained a true
idea, or, rather, two true ideas — in the first place that a being
who is on the same level as man and has the same needs and
faculties cannot be the true object of reverence and worship, and,
secondly, that in order to have a powerful and beneficial influence
in the earthly sphere, such as is characteristic of a higher being,
one must withdraw from that sphere and sever one's immediate
physical connection with it. If family worship of the older
generation was to be maintained in the epoch when force pre
dominated, it could not be allowed to be associated with the

412 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

spectacle of debility and weakness. The old men understood it
themselves and with noble wisdom parted in good time with their
enfeebled life for the sake of another, powerful and mysterious
existence.

" My day is drawing to its close," the Konung thus began,
"Mead does not taste sweet to me, my helmet weighs me down.

" Make then two mounds for us, O sons,
On the banks of the bay, by the wave-beaten shore,

" When the rocks are white with the light of the moon,
And wet our graves with the dew,

We shall rise from the hills, from the waters, O Thorsten,
And whisper of the days to be."

Even in the heathen ancestor-worship the natural bond between
the successive generations tended to acquire a spiritual and moral
meaning. A complete realisation of this religious bond with the
forefathers is made possible through the revelation of the absolute
significance of life in Christianity. Instead of the material
sacrificial feeding of the departed who on their side help the living
in affairs of this world, there is established a" spiritual interaction
in prayer and sacrament. Both sides pray for one another, both
help one another in attaining an eternal good. Both are con
cerned with an unconditional good — the salvation of the soul.
Eternal memory,1 rest with the saints, universal resurrection of
life — this is what the living desire for the departed^ what they
help them to attain, and it is in this that they expect help from
the departed for themselves. The mutual relation, as it enters the
sphere of the absolute, ceases to be self-interested and becomes
purely moral, being understood and carried out as part of the per
fect good.

Eternal memory does not mean, of course, that people on earth
will eternally remember the dead as those who have been and are
no more. To begin with, it would not be of much import
ance for the dead, and, secondly, it is impossible, since earthly
humanity itself ought certainly not to expect an eternal continua
tion of its temporal existence — if there is any meaning in the
world. We ask eternal memory of God and not of men, and

1 The prayer for granting 'eternal memory' to the departed forms an important part
of the funeral and the requiem services in the Orthodox Church. — Translator's Note.

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 413

it means dwelling in the eternal mind of God. c To grant
eternal memory ' means to make a man conformable to his
eternal idea — to God's eternal thought about him, and to raise
him to the sphere of the absolute and the changeless. By com
parison with the anxieties of the world, it is eternal rest.
Death as such is not rest, and the dead among natural
humanity may be more appropriately described as restless (the
French revenant^ the German Poltergeister] than as those at
rest. The rest we ask for our departed depends upon God's
eternal memory of them. Affirmed in their absolute idea, they
find in it a secure and indefeasible token that the perfect good
will be finally realised in the world, and therefore they cannot be
troubled. The distinction between the present and the future
still exists for them, but no element of doubt or anxiety attaches
to that future. It is separated from them only by an inevitable
delay, and they may already contemplate it sub specie aeternitatis.
But for those who die in the natural humanity, the future,
though it becomes their main interest, still remains an awe-inspir
ing riddle and mystery.

We shall rise from the hills, from the waters, O Thorsten,
And whisper of the days to be.

Eternal rest is not inactivity. The departed remain active, but
the character of the activity is essentially changed. It no longer
springs from an anxious striving towards a distant and uncertain
end. It proceeds on the basis and in virtue of the already attained
and the ever -abiding connection with the absolute good.
Therefore in this case activity is compatible with serene and
happy rest. And just as the beneficial influence of the departed
expresses their moral connection with their neighbours in nature^
their living posterity, so in their blessed rest they are inseparable
from their neighbours in God and in eternity. It is rest with the
saints.

This is the ideal. If it is not attained by all, if the de
parted are not all at rest, if not all to whom c eternal memory '
is sung deserve it of God, this fact in no way affects our religious
attitude to the * forefathers,' which is the foundation of the family
morality, and, through it, of all morality. For in the first place
the actual destiny of each of the departed remains for us, after all,
problematical only. Secondly, even if the unfavourable supposi-

414 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

tion is the more probable one, our religious attitude simply
acquires a different character, and the feeling of pity which comes
to be added to it prompts us to more active intercession. Finally,
in the case of each person the majority, or at any rate a certain
number, of his ancestors satisfy the demands of the c eternal
memory ' and of c rest with the saints.' Therefore every man in
addition to all other relations is bound to have a generic bond, a
bond of kinship with the world of God's eternity. In this
essential respect the family may have an absolute significance for
every one, and, through the abiding past, be the true complement
of our moral personality.

On the other hand, the fulness of life for the forefathers, even
when they are eternally remembered by God and are at rest with
the saints, depends upon the work of their descendants who bring
about the earthly conditions under which the end of the world
process may come, and, with it, the bodily resurrection of the
departed. Each of the departed is naturally connected with the
final humanity of the future through the blood tie of successive
generations.1 By spiritualising his bodily organism and the
external material nature, each fulfils his duty in relation to his
forefathers, and pays his moral debt to them. Having received
from them physical existence and all the legacy of the past ages,
the new generation continues further the work which will finally
make the fulness of life possible for the departed also. Thus
from this new point of view, the natural bond with former genera
tions, or the family religion 'of the past, acquires an absolute
significance and becomes an expression of the perfect good.

It is only when the purpose shall have been reached that man's
work of spiritualising his body and the earthly nature in general
will be reflected backwards and exercise its beneficial influence
upon the past. It is only in the future that the past will attain
the fulness of reality. But until this task is accomplished, until
the perfection of life is attained in which the spiritual and the
corporeal being will entirely interpenetrate one another, until the
gulf between the visible and the invisible world is bridged and

1 I cannot enlarge upon the details of this connection and upon other cognate
questions without passing into the sphere of metaphysics and mystical aesthetics. But
the general necessity of resurrection as the fulness of the spiritual and bodily existence
is sufficiently clear from the point of view of the absolute moral principle and of the
moral order of reality.

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 415

death becomes impossible both for the living and for the dead —
until then the necessary condition of this future perfection and
the moral problem of the present state is the struggle of the spirit
with the flesh, its strengthening and concentration. The present
means of bodily resurrection is the subjugation of the flesh ; the
necessary condition of the fulness of life is asceticism or the sup
pression of the unlimited vitality. True asceticism, i.e. spiritual
power over the flesh leading to the resurrection of life, has two
forms — monasticism and marriage. The first, exclusive and ex
ceptional, has already been discussed elsewhere ; l the explanation
of the second forms part of the argument now before us.

Ill v

It is not for nothing that the relation, which appears to be so
simple, and the physical basis of which is found in the animal and
even in the vegetable kingdom, is called ' a great mystery,' and is
recognised as the abiding symbol, sanctified by the word of God,
of the union of the God of Israel with His people, of Christ
crucified with the earthly church, and of Christ the King of
Glory with the New Jerusalem. Reverence for the forefathers
and religious interaction with them connects man with the perfect
good through the past j true marriage has the same significance
for the present, for the central period of life. It is the realisation
of the absolute moral norm in the vital centre of human existence.
The opposition of the sexes, which in the world of pre-human
organisms expresses simply a general interaction between life as
giving, and as receiving, form, between the active and the passive
principles, acquires a more definite and profound meaning in the
case of man. Woman, unlike the female of animals, is not merely
the embodiment of the passively receptive aspect of the material
reality. She is the concentrated substance of nature as a whole,
the final expression of the material world in its inward passivity,
as ready to pass into a new and higher kingdom and be morally
spiritualised. And man in his relation to woman does not merely
represent the active principle as such, but is the bearer of the
purely human activity, determined by the absolute meaning of
life, in which woman comes to participate through him. And

1 See above, Part I. Chapter II., 'The Ascetic Principle of Morality.'

416 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

he in his turn owes to her the possibility of realising that meaning
or the absolute good in a direct and immediate way.

The highest morality, proceeding from the absolute principle
and determined by it (that which in theology is called grace\ does
not annihilate nature but imparts true perfection to it. The
natural relation between man and woman involves three elements :
(i) the material^ namely, the physical attraction, due to the nature
of the organism ; (2) the ideal, that exaltation of feeling which is
called being in love ; and, finally, (3) the purpose of the natural
sexual relation or its final result, namely, reproduction.

In true marriage the natural bond between the sexes does not
disappear but is transmuted. Until, however, this transmutation
becomes a fact, it is a moral problem, for which the elements of
the natural sexual relation are the data. The chief significance
belongs to the intermediate element — the exaltation or the
ecstasy of love. In virtue of it man sees his natural com
plement, his material other — the woman, — not as she appears
to external observation, not as others see her, but gains insight
into her true essence or idea. He sees her as she was from the
first destined to be, as God saw her from all eternity, and as she
shall be in the end. Material nature in its highest individual
expression — the woman — is here truly recognised as possessed of
absolute worth ; she is affirmed as an end in herself, an entity
capable of spiritualisation and c deification.' From such re
cognition follows the moral duty — so to act as to realise in
this actual woman and in her life -that which she ought to
be. The highest form of love in woman has a corresponding
character. The man whom she has chosen appears to her as her
true saviour, destined to reveal to her and to realise for her the
meaning of her life.

Marriage remains the satisfaction of the sexual want, which,
however, no longer refers to the external nature of the animal
organism, but to the nature that is human and is awaiting to
become divine. A tremendous problem arises which can only be
solved by constant renunciation. To be victorious in the struggle
with the hostile reality the soul has to pass through martyrdom?-

1 D. P. Yurkevitch, Professor of Philosophy, now deceased, told me that a young
scholar, son of an evangelical pastor in Moscow, was present once at the marriage
ceremony in the Russian Church, and was very much struck by the fact that in the

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 417

From this point of view the complete and real satisfaction which
includes bodily sensibility is connected not with desire that precedes
it, but with the subsequent joy of realised perfection.

It is obvious, of course, that in a perfect marriage in which
the inner completeness of the human being is finally attained
through a perfect union with the spiritualised material essence,
reproduction becomes both unnecessary and impossible. It
becomes unnecessary because the supreme purpose has been
achieved, the final goal attained. It becomes impossible, just as
it is impossible that when two equal geometrical figures are placed
one upon the other there should be a remainder that does not
coincide. The perfect marriage is the beginning of a new pro
cess which does not reproduce life in time but re-creates it for
eternity. But we must not forget that perfect marriage is not
necessarily the original condition of, but only the final means for,
the moral union of man and woman. One cannot assume this
higher stage from the first, just as one cannot begin to build a
house by making a roof, or call the roof a real house. The true
human marriage is one which consciously aims at the perfect
union of man and woman, at the creation of the complete human
being. So long, however, as it merely aims at this and has not
yet actually realised the idea, so long as there still is a duality
between the idea and the empirical material reality opposed to it,
so long external, physical reproduction is both the natural conse
quence of the perfection not yet attained and the necessary means for its
future attainment. It is clear that so long as the union of man
and woman is not wholly spiritualised, so long as it is complete in
idea and subjective feeling only, and in objective reality continues
to be superficial and external like that of animals, it can have no
other result. But it is equally clear that in the present imperfect
condition this result is of supreme importance, for the children will
do what the parents failed to accomplish. The external, temporal
succession of generations exists because marriage has not yet

service the bridal crowns are compared to crowns of the martyrs. This profound idea
affected him so deeply that it caused a complete revolution in his mind. As a result
of it, the young philologist gave up worldly learning and the university chair he was
going to occupy, and, to the distress of his relatives, went into a monastery. He was
xtirc~weUrknown Father Clement Sederholm, of whose life and character the late K. N.

( Leontyev) wrote so excellent an account.

^ -^ 2 E

4i8 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

attained perfection, because the union of individual man and
woman is not sufficiently spiritual and inwardly complete to re
create in them the perfect human being in the image and likeness
of God. But this '•because1 also proves to be lln order that1 — namely,
in order that the task which has been too great for the strength
of this individual being (man and woman) should be realised by
him indirectly, through a series of future generations taking their
start from him. Thus the inward completeness and the uncon
ditional meaning of family is re-established j man even in his
imperfect state retains his absolute significance, and the living
bond between the temporal members of the series, extending to
eternity, remains unbroken.

For the moral organisation of humanity the connection with
the past through heredity alone, through the fact of descent, i.e.
from a particular line of ancestors, is insufficient ; there must
also be an abiding moral bond, and this is found in the family
religion. Further, so far as the present is concerned, the natural
fact of the sexual relation is also insufficient for that organisation j
the relation must be raised to the spiritual level, which is done in
true marriage. Finally, from the point of view of the future, it
is not enough for the moral organisation of the collective man
that the children should be simply a new generation, with an
unknown future before it ; in addition to the fact of external
succession there must be the inner moral succession as well — the
parents must not merely produce the children for the future, but
are in duty bound to bring them up so. that they could work in
the future for the realisation of their world-wide historical task.

IV

The natural moral feeling of pity which does not permit us to
injure our neighbours and compels us to help them is naturally
concentrated upon those of them who are most intimately related
to us and at the same time need our help most — that is, on
the children. This relation has a moral character when the
family is simply an empirical factor in the natural life of man ; it
acquires an absolute significance when the family becomes the
basis of a new, spiritually-organised life.

The moral significance of marriage consists in the fact that

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 419

woman ceases to be the instrument of natural desires but is recog
nised as a being possessed of absolute worth, as a complement
necessary to make the individual man truly whole. When the
marriage fails or does not completely succeed in realising this
absolute significance of human individuality, the task acquires a
different object and is transferred to the children as bearers of the
future. With the simple natural pity for the weak and suffering
offspring comes to be associated the world-woe for the evils and
troubles of life, the hope that these new beings shall be able to
lighten the universal burden, and, finally, the duty to preserve
them for this work and to prepare them for it.

In a spiritually-organised family the relation of the parents to
children is chiefly determined by the conception of the supreme
destiny of man. The purpose of education is to connect the
temporal life of this future generation with the supreme and eternal
good which is common to all generations, and in which the grand
parents, parents, and children are indivisibly one. For it is only
through abolishing the temporal disruption of humanity into
generations that exclude and expel one another from existence
that the Kingdom of God can be revealed and the resurrection of life
accomplished. But until the perfection is reached, the moral bond
between generations and the absolute supertemporal unity of man
is maintained by reverent regard for the forefathers on the one
hand, and by the bringing up of children on the other.

There is a great argument going on in man between Time and
Eternity as to who is the stronger — the Good or Death. " Your
fathers," says the Prince of this world to man, " those through
whom you have received everything you possess, were and are no
more, nor ever shall be ; but, if so, where is the Good ? You are recon
ciled to the death of your fathers, you sanction it by your consent,
you live and enjoy yourself^ whilst those to whom you owe your existence
are gone forever. Where, then, is the good, where is the very source
of piety — gratitude, where is pity, where is shame ? Have they not
been completely conquered by selfishness, self-seeking, sensuality ?
Yet do not despair. This condemnation of your life has meaning
only from the point of view of the Good, only on the supposition
that the Good exists. But this is just where the fundamental error
lies : there is no Good. If there were, either your fathers would
not have died, or you could not have been reconciled to their death.

420 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

And now it is clear that the Good, with its fictitious demands and
standards of piety, shame, and pity, is but an empty claim. If you
want to live, live forgetful of the Good, for it has been swallowed
up by death, is no more and never shall be." " Your fathers died,
but they have not ceased to exist, for the keys of life are in my
hands," says Eternity. " Believe not that they disappeared. That
you might behold them again bind yourself to the unseen by the
secure bond of the Good : revere them, pity them, be ashamed to
forget them." " Illusion ! " says the Prince of Time again. "You
may believe in their hidden subjective existence if you like ; but
if you are not content with such a counterfeit of life for yourself,
and cling to the fulness of the visible objective life, then, if the
Good exists, you must demand the same for your fathers. But the
visible objective existence — the only one worth speaking about —
has been lost by your fathers, and shall never more be returned to
them. Renounce, then, the impotent Good, the exhausting struggle
with chimeras, and enjoy life to the full." But the last word is
with Eternity, which, admitting the past, appeals all the more con
fidently to the future. " The Good does not depend upon the
degree of your power, and your weakness is not the impotence of
the Good. And you yourself are only impotent when you do not
go beyond your own self; the incompleteness of your life is your
own doing. In truth all is open to you. Live in all things, be
a unity of yourself and your other, not only in relation to the past,
to your forefathers, but also in relation to the future. Affirm your
self in new generations that with active help from you they might
bring the world to that final stage in which God will give back the
fulness of life to all — to them themselves, to you, and to your fathers
before you. By doing this you can at the present moment show
the absolute power of the Good over time and death, not by idly
denying them, but by making use of them for the full and perfect
revelation of the immortal life. Make use of the death of your
forefathers, so as to preserve, in the religious regard for the departed,
a sure token of their resurrection. Make use of your temporal
existence, so that, by giving it to posterity, by transferring the
centre of your moral gravity into the future, you might anticipate
and bring nearer the final revelation of the Kingdom of God in
the world."

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 421

Even the conventional everyday morality demands that man
should hand down to his children not only the goods he has
acquired, but also the capacity to work for the further maintenance
of their lives. The supreme and unconditional morality also
requires that the present generation should leave a twofold legacy
to the next, — in the first place, all the positive acquisitions of the
past, all the savings of history ; and, secondly, the capacity and the
readiness to use this capital for the common good, for a nearer
approach to the supreme goal. This is the essential purpose of
true education, which must be at once both traditional and pro
gressive. The division and opposition between these two factors
of the true life — between the ground and that which is built upon
it, between the root and that which grows out of it — is absurd and
detrimental to both sides. If the past that is good is self-contained
and is no longer a real foundation for the new that is better, it
means that the old has lost its vital force. In regarding it as
finished and worshipping it in this form as an external object, we
make religion into a relic — dead, but not working miracles. This
is the besetting sin of popular conservatism which strives to replace
the living fruits of the spirit by artificial preserves. In so far as it
finds expression in religion, this pseudo-conservatism produces men
who are hostile and indifferent to religion. Faith cannot be the
consequence of such bringing up, since it is absent from the ground
of it. It is obvious, indeed, that exclusive zeal for preserving faith
can only be due to the lack of faith in the zealots themselves.
They would have neither time nor occasion to be so distressed and
worried about faith if they lived by faith.

When tradition is put in the place of its object — when, e.g.^ the
traditional conception of Christ is preserved in absolute purity, but
the presence of Christ Himself and of His spirit is not felt — religious
life becomes impossible, and all efforts artificially to evoke it only
make the fatal loss more clear.

But can the life of the future grow out of a past that is
really dead ? If there is no real connection between the parts
of time, what is the meaning of progress ? Who is it that
progresses ? Could a tree actually grow if its roots and
trunk existed in thought only, and its branches and leaves alone

422 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

were actually real ? Without dwelling at present upon the
logical absurdity involved in this point of view, let us deal with its
ethical aspect alone. Man as a moral being has absolute worth ;
his present condition, taken as such, does not correspond, or is
inadequate to that worth. Hence arises the moral problem, not to
separate oneself, one's own personality and existence, from the
absolute good which abides as the one in all. In so far as a moral
being is inwardly related to all, he really has absolute worth and
his dignity is satisfied. In the order of time the all from which
we must not separate ourselves, and to which we must be inwardly
united, appears in two immediate ways, as our past and as our
future^ as ancestors and posterity. In order to realise our moral
dignity in time, we must spiritually become that which physically
we are already, namely, a uniting and intermediate link between
the two. And to do so we must recognise the abiding reality of
the departed and the unconditional future of the posterity. We
must not regard the deceased as ended. They are bearers of the
absolute principle, which must be completely realised for them
also. The departed, the forefathers, living in the memory of the
past, have also a hidden existence in the present, which will become
manifest in the future. They have both future and actuality.

It is on this basis alone that true education is possible. If we
are indifferent to the future of our forefathers, we can have no
motive for caring about the future of the new generation. If we
can have no absolute moral solidarity with those who died^ there
can be no ground for such solidarity with those who certainly
will die. In so far as education mainly consists in transferring moral
duty from one generation to another, the question arises what
duty and in relation to whom are we to hand down to our successors,
if our own bond with our ancestors be severed. It would be a
mere play of words to say that it is the duty to move humanity
forward, for neither 'forward 'nor 'humanity' have in this case
any real meaning. c Forward ' must mean to the good, but there
can be no good if we start with evil — the most elementary and
unquestionable evil of ingratitude to the fathers, acquiescence in
their disappearance, callous separation and estrangement from them.
And what is the humanity which our pupils and successors are to
move forward ? Do last year's leaves, scattered by the wind and
rotten on the ground, form part, together with the new leaves,

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 423

of one and the same tree ? From this point of view there is no
humanity at all, and what exists are merely separate generations
of men that replace one another.

If this external relation, which is constantly passing away, is
to be replaced by the real and abiding moral tie, this obviously
must be done in two directions. The form of time, in itself
morally indifferent, cannot really determine our moral relations.
Compromise here is impossible — there cannot be two absolute
principles of life. The question whether we attach absolute signi
ficance to the temporal order of events or to the moral order, that
is, to the inner bond between beings, must be settled finally and
once for all. If the first alternative be adopted, humanity, irre
mediably broken up in time, is devoid of real unity ; there can be
no common task and therefore no duty to bring up future genera
tions that they might carry it on further. In case of the second
alternative, however, education inevitably involves reverence for
the past, of which it is the natural complement. This traditional
element in education conditions its progressive character, since
moral progress can only consist in a better and more far-reaching fulfil
ment of the duties which follow from tradition.

The absolute worth of man — his capacity to be the bearer of
eternal life and to participate in the divine fulness of being —
which we religiously revere in the departed, we morally educate
in the coming generation by affirming that the two are connected
by a bond that triumphs over time and death. Special problems,
the technique of education, belong to a sphere of its own which I
need not touch upon here. But if pedagogy is to be based upon
a positive universal principle, indisputable from the moral point of
view and bestowing absolute worth upon its aims, it can find it
only in the indissoluble bond between generations which support
one another in furthering one common task — the task of
preparing for the revelation of the kingdom of God and for universal
resurrection.

VI

Reverence for the forefathers and family education based upon
it overcome the immoral separateness and re-establish the moral
solidarity of men in the order of time or in the succession of existence.

424 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

It is a victory of the good over individual selfishness — the affirma
tion of the personality as a positive element in the family union
which abides in spite of time and death. But if it is to be the
basis of a moral and, therefore, a universal organisation, if it is to
be the incipient form of the absolute and therefore all-embracing
good, this union cannot be self-contained, limited, and exclusive.
The family directly re-establishes the moral wholeness in one
fundamental relation — that of the succession of generations. This
wholeness, however, must also be re-established in the order of
coexistence.

The linear infinity of the family can only become morally
complete in another wider whole — just as a geometrical line
becomes real only as the limit of a surface, which has the same
relation to the line as the line itself has to a point. The
moral point — the single individual — has actual reality only as
the bearer of generic succession. The whole line of this suc
cession becomes truly real only in connection with a multitude
of collectively coexisting families which constitute a nation. We
received all our physical and moral possessions from our fathers,
and the fathers had them only through the fatherland. Family tradi
tions are fractions of the national traditions ; the future of the
family is inseparable from the future of the nation. Therefore
reverence for the fathers necessarily passes into reverence for the
fatherland or into patriotism, and family education is linked with
national education.

The good which is in its essence inexhaustible and ungrudging
bestows upon every subject of moral relations, whether individual
or collective, an inner dignity and absolute worth of its own.
For this reason the moral bond and the moral organisation differs
essentially from every other by the fact that in it the subject of
the lower, or, more strictly, of the narrower order in becoming
the subordinate member of a higher or a wider whole, is not
absorbed by it, but preserves its own individual peculiarity. Indeed,
it finds in this subordination both the inner condition and the
external environment for realising its highest dignity. Just as
the family does not blot out its individual members, but gives
them, within a certain sphere, the fulness of life, and lives not by
them only, but also in and for them, so the nation absorbs neither
the individual nor the family, but fills tliem with livm^ con tent

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 425

in a definite national form. This definite form, which constitutes
the particular significance or the positive quality of a nation, is
to be found, in the first place, in language. As a definite ex
pression, as a special characteristic of universal reason, language
unites those who speak some one particular language without
separating them, however, from people who speak another language
— for all languages are but special qualifications of the all-embracing
word ; in it all languages are commensurate with or understandable
by one another.

The multiplicity of languages is in itself something as positive
and normal as the multiplicity of grammatical elements and forms
in each of these languages. What is abnormal is mutual lack of
understanding and the alienation that follows therefrom. Accord
ing to the sacred story of the tower of Babel, the divine punish
ment for, and at the same time the natural consequence of seeking
external and godless unity, consists in the loss of the inner unity
and solidarity and in being unable to understand one another's
speech (which is possible even when the vocabulary is identical).
Had not the inner moral unity been lost, the difference of languages
would not have mattered ; one might have learnt them, and there
would have been no need to scatter upon the face of the earth.
The important point was not the creation of new languages, but
confusion of them. " Go to, let us go down, and there confound
(nabld] their language (safatam^ that they may not understand one
another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence
upon the face of all the earth " (Gen. xi. 7-9). It is clear that the
story does not refer to the origin of the many languages, for in
order that they might be confused they must have existed already.

The profound significance of this remarkable ancient revela
tion can be fully understood only by comparing the book of
Genesis with the New Testament book of the Acts of the
Apostles. " And when the day of Pentecost was fully come,
they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there
came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it
filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared
unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of
them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to
speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And
there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every

426 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multi
tude came together, and were confounded, because that every man
heard them speak in his own language. And they were all
amazed, and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all
these which speak Galilaeans ? And how hear we every man in
our own tongue, wherein we were born ? Parthians, and Medes,
and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea,
and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in
Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers
of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear
them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God" (Acts
ii. i-n).

True unity does not annul multiplicity but finds its realisa
tion in it, setting it free from the limitations of exclusive-
ness. One language inspired by the Spirit of God means com-
municability and understanding between many distinct languages^
which are divided but do not divide. This is not the idea of the
inventors and adherents of various Volapucs and Esperantos, who
consciously or unconsciously imitate the builders of the Tower of
Babel.1

The normal relation between languages is at the same time
the normal relation between nations (in Slavonic the two concep
tions are expressed by the same word). The true unity of
languages is found not in a single language but in an all-embracing
language, that is in an interpenetration of all languages which
would make them equally understandable to all while the peculiarity
of each would be preserved. Similarly the true uni ty of nations
does not mean a single nationality, but an all-embracing nationality,
that is, interaction and solidarity of all nations for the sake of
each having . an ^independent and full life of its own.

VII

When, having learnt a new language, we understand a
foreigner whose language it is, when we not only understand the
meaning of words he speaks but by means of them enter into a

1 The inner relation and contrast between the confusion of Babel and the meeting
of the Apostles in Sion, as the violation and the restitution of the norm, are clearly
indicated in the Church anthems sung at Pentecost.

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 427

real communion of feelings, thoughts, and aspirations with him,
we clearly prove thereby that true unity of men is not limited to
persons belonging to the same people. It is impossible to deny
the fact of this inter -lingual and international and therefore
universally-human communion, but it may be maintained that
the communion is purely a superficial relation based upon no real
unity. This contention is often urged by those who maintain
that although a nation is a real whole, humanity is purely a
general idea, abstracted from the fact of interaction between
separate nations essentially external to one another. Leaving it
to metaphysics to decide to what extent all interaction involves
an underlying unity of those that interact, I will only note here
that the peculiarity of the particular interaction which obtains
between different nations or between individuals belonging to
different nations, presupposes, apart from all metaphysics, at least
the same kind of real unity which is assumed to hold within each
nation between the groups and individual persons who compose it.
What ground is there for regarding nationality as a real
power and a nation as a real unit rather than a mere conglomera
tion of human entities ? With regard to the family the question
is answered by pointing out the evident physical bond. With
regard to the nation three grounds are indicated.

1. The supposed physical bond^ or the unity of descent. — This
supposition^ however, has equal and, indeed, far greater force in
reference to humanity as a whole than to distinct nations. The
original unity of mankind is a dogma of three monotheistic
religions and the prevailing opinion of philosophers and naturalists
— while a direct unity of physical descent within the limits of a
nation is, in the vast majority of cases, obvious fiction.

2. Language. — Identity of language unites those who speak
it, but we know that difference of language does not prevent men
from being of the same mind, thinking the same thoughts, and
even using the same words. For such difference does not abolish
but makes manifest the one inner language undoubtedly common
to all men, who can under certain conditions understand each
other whatever their particular tongue may be. This is not a
superficial result of external interaction, for that which is here
mutually understood refers not merely to accidental objects but
embraces the inmost contents of the human soul. This funda-

428 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

mental and profoundly real fact expresses the actual connection and
unity of all men. Difference of tongue is the difference between
the essential forms of the mental life, and is important, since every
such form represents a particular quality of the soul. Yet still
more important is the content which each form expresses in
its own way and which though present in all is not exhausted by,
nor is exclusive of, any. That content is the positive and in
dependent principle of the hidden unity and of the visible unifica
tion of all.

Language is the deepest and most fundamental expression of
character. But just as differences of individual character do not
destroy the unity of the nation which includes all the different
people, so differences of national character cannot destroy the real
unity of all nations in humanity, which is also a c character.'

3. History. — If national history is the basis of national unity,
universal or world-history is the basis of a wider, but not less
stable, all-human unity. Moreover, national history is altogether
unthinkable except as an inseparable part of world-history. Try
to think of Russian history from the exclusively national point
of view. Even if the Scandinavian origin of our state could
somehow be explained away, it cannot be denied that the intro
duction of Christianity into Russia by the Greeks at once
brought our nation into the sphere of the supernational life of
the world. Christianity as such or in its content is an absolute
truth and is therefore superhuman, and not merely supernational.
Even from the purely historical point of view, however, it cannot
be traced to any one particular nationality. It is impossible to
separate the Jewish nueleus from the Chaldean and Persian,
Egyptian and Phoenician, Greek and Roman setting. And yet
without this national nucleus and this national setting there
could have been no Christianity as positive revelation, and the
foundation for the world-wide Kingdom of God would not have
been laid. But whatever the significance of the national elements
in the historical formation of the world religion may be, new
nations such as Russia, which appeared after Christianity became
established and accepted it in its crystallised form as the final
revelation of the supreme and absolute good, cannot look to them
selves for the true source of their life. Their history can only have
meaning as a more or less perfect acquisition of the given, as

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 429

a more or less successful preparation for fulfilling the task
Christianity had put before them. It is obvious that during such
a preparatory process not a single Christian nation can or ought
to be separate from, alien or hostile to other nations, for such a
relation is opposed to the very essence of Christianity — and it
is impossible to prepare for carrying out a given task while
remaining in direct opposition to its inner meaning. Russia
definitely confirmed her faith in Christian universalism when in
the most glorious and important epoch of her new history she
finally abandoned her national isolation and showed herself to be
a living member of the international whole. And it was not till
then that the national strength of Russia found expression in what
is still the most significant and precious thing we have — and not
for ourselves only, but for other nations as well. On the powerful
stem of the state, c Europeanised ' by Peter, grew the beautiful
flower of our pensive, deep, and tender poetry. Russian uni
versalism — which resembles cosmopolitanism as little as the
language of the Apostles resembles Volapuc — is connected with
the names of Peter the Great and Pushkin. What other national
Russian names can be said to equal these ?

Just as the individual man finds the meaning of his personal
existence through the family, through his connection with his
ancestors and posterity, just as the family has an abiding living
content in the nation and national tradition, so the nation lives,
moves, and has its being only in a supernational and an inter
national environment. Just as the whole series of successive
generations live in and through the individual man, just as the
whole nation lives and acts in and through the totality of these
series, so the whole humanity lives and works out its history in the
totality of nations.

If nation be a real fact and not an abstract general idea, if the
inward organic nature of the bond which unites nations with one
another in the universal history be a fact also, humanity as a whole,
too, must be recognised as a fact. Real living organs can only be
organs of a real living organism, and not of an abstract idea. The
absolute moral solidarity in the good, uniting man with his
ancestors and his descendants, and thus forming the normal family,
also unites him, by means of this elementary and immediate bond of
liberation, to the world- whole concentrated in humanity. Humanity

430 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

is the complete collective subject or ' recipient ' of the perfect
good, the full image and likeness of the Deity, the bearer of the
actual moral order — the Kingdom of God. But, as has already
been said, it follows from the very nature of the moral order or
the moral organisation that every part or every member of
the great collective man participates in the absolute complete
ness of the whole, since he is as necessary to that complete
ness as it is to him. The moral bond is perfectly mutual.
Humanity is unthinkable apart from the nations that compose it,
the nation is unthinkable apart from families and the family apart
from individuals, and, vice versa^ the individual cannot exist, either
physically or morally, apart from the succession of generations, the
moral life of the family is impossible apart from the nation, and the
life of the nation is impossible apart from humanity. This truism
used to be readily accepted by all. Recently, however, for reasons
which the existing systems of the philosophy of history have not yet
been able to discover, it has become customary to separate, contrary
to all logic, this elementary truth from its necessary apex, and to
declare that the inner dependence of nations upon humanity is a
fancy and a chimera. It is granted that a bad son and a bad father,
a man who has no reverence for his ancestors and does not care about
the upbringing of his descendants (whether physical or spiritual),
cannot be a good patriot, and that a bad patriot cannot truly serve
the common good. It is also granted that, vice versa^ a bad
patriot cannot be a good member of a family, and that a bad member
of a family cannot be a really good man. But it is not allowed
that in virtue of the same solidarity between the different degrees
of organisation a man indifferent to the one supreme good of all
nations taken together cannot be a really good patriot (and con
sequently cannot be a good member of a family, and, finally, cannot
be individually good). And yet it is perfectly clear that if a man has
for his supreme purpose the good of his own nation, taken separ
ately and independently of others, he in the first place deprives the
highest good of its essential characteristic of universality, and
therefore distorts the purpose itself. Secondly, in dividing the
interest of one nation from the interests of the others, while in
reality they are intimately connected, he distorts the idea of his
own nation. Thirdly, it follows from this double distortion that
such a man can only be serving a distorted nation by communi-

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 431

eating to it a distorted good — that is, he can only be serving evil,
and, since he does nothing but harm to his fatherland, he must be
pronounced a bad patriot.

The good embraces all the details of life, but in itself it is
indivisible. Patriotism as a virtue is part of the right atti
tude to everything, and in the moral order this part cannot be
separated from the whole and opposed to it-/iQ the moral organisa-
tion not a single nation. can_ prosper at the. expense of others ; it
cannot positively affirm itself to the detriment or the disadvantage
of others. Just as the positive moral dignity of a private person is
known from the fact that his prosperity is truly useful to all others,
so the prosperity of a nation true to the moral principle is neces
sarily connected with the universal good. This logical and moral
axiom is crudely distorted in the popular sophism that we must
think of our own nation only, because it is good, and therefore its
prosperity is a benefit to every one. It either thoughtlessly over
looks or impudently rejects the obvious truth that this very aliena
tion of one's own nation from others, this exclusive recognition of
it as pre-eminently good, is in itself evil, and that nothing but evil
can spring from this evil root. It must be one or the other.
Either we must renounce Christianity and monotheism in general,
according to which "there is none good but one, that is, God,"
and recognise our nation as such to be the highest good — that is,
put it in the place of God — or we must admit that a people
becomes good not in virtue of the simple fact of its particular
nationality, but only in so far as it conforms to and participates in
the absolute good. And it can only do so if it has a right attitude
to everything, and, in the first place, to other nations. A nation
cannot be really good so long as it feels malice or hostility against
other nations, and fails to recognise them as its neighbours and to
love them as itself.

The moral duty of a true patriot is then to serve the nation in
the good, or to serve the true good of a nation, inseparable from
the good of all, or, what is the same thing, to serve the nation in
humanity^ and humanity in the nation. Such a patriot will discover
a positive aspect in every foreign race and people, and by means
of it will seek to relate this race or people with his own for the
benefit of both.

When we hear of a rapprochement between nations, of inter-

432 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

national agreements, friendships, and alliances, we must, before
rejoicing or being grieved about it, know in what it is that the
nations are being united, in good or in evil. The fact of union
as such decides nothing. If two private people or two nations are
united by the hatred of a third, their union is an evil and a source of
fresh evil. If they are united by mutual interest or by common gain,
the question still remains open. The interest may be unworthy,
the gain may be fictitious, and in that case the union of nations,
as well as of individuals, even if it is not a direct evil, can certainly
not be a good desirable for its own sake. The union of men and
nations can be positively approved only in so far as it furthers the
moral organisation of humanity, or the organisation of the absolute
good in it. We have seen that the ultimate subject of this
organisation, the real bearer of the moral order^ is the collective
man or humanity, successively differentiated into its organs and
elements — nations, families, persons. Having determined who it
is that is morally organised, we must decide what he is organised
in — that is, must consider the question as to the universal forms of
the moral order.

VIII

The right or the due relation of man to the higher world, to
other men, and to the lower nature is collectively organised in
the forms of the Church, the state, and the economic society or
the zemstvo.

Individual religious feeling finds its objective development and
realisation in the universal Church, which thus may be said to be
organised piety,

From the point of view of religious morality, man lives in
three different spheres : the worldly or the conditional (this world),
the Divine or the unconditional (the Kingdom of God), and the
sphere which is intermediary between the two, and binds them
together — the religious sphere in the strict sense (the Church).

To stop at a direct opposition between the world and the
Deity, between earth and heaven, is contrary to sound religious
feeling. Even supposing that we are genuinely prepared to
regard the universe as worthless dust, that dust does not fear
our contempt — it remains. On whom or what f To say that it

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 433

remains on the Deity would obviously be impious. To declare
the world dust to be an illusion of our imagination would mean
that our own self, enslaved by the weary nightmare of phenomena
and powerless before the phantoms it has created, is itself a worth
less speck of dust which has somehow got into the eye of eternity
and hopelessly mars its purity ; and this second view would be
still more impious than the first. Everything in the long run
must be referred to God, and, therefore, the more contempt
we have for the world, the more unworthy is our conception of
the Absolute being. To declare that the world is pure nothing
is the height of blasphemy, since in that case all the evil aspects
of existence, which are not abolished by a verbal rejection of them,
must be directly and immediately ascribed to God. This argu
ment cannot be avoided so long as only two opposing terms are
recognised. But there exists a third intermediary term, the
historical environment in and through which the worthless dust
of the earth is converted, by a skilful system of fertilisation, into
a fruitful ground for the future Kingdom of God.

Sound religious feeling demands not that we should reject the
world and seek to abolish it, but only that we should not accept
the world as an absolutely independent principle of our life.
Being in the world we must become not of the world, and in this
capacity influence the world so that it too should cease to be on
its own account and become more and more from God.

The essence of piety at the highest stage of universal con
sciousness consists in ascribing absolute worth to God alone and
in valuing all else only as related to Him and as capable of having
absolute worth not in itself and of itself, but in and through God.
Everything acquires worth through the fixing of its positive relationship
with the one worthiness.

If all men and nations were truly pious, that is, identified
their own good with the one absolute good and blessedness, that
is, God, they would obviously be united among themselves. And
being at one in God, they would live in God's way ; their unity
would be holiness. The present humanity, however, which is
not brought together and elevated by the one exclusive interest
in God, is following its own will, and is divided between a
multitude of relative and disconnected interests. The result is
alienation and disruption ; and since good actions cannot spring

2 F

434 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

from an evil root, the activity of divided humanity can as such
lead to nothing but sin. Therefore the moral organisation
of humanity cannot begin until mankind is really united and its
activity is consecrated.

Perfect unity and holiness is in God, sin and division in the
worldly humanity, union and consecration in the Church which
harmonises and reconciles the divided and sinful world with God.
But in order to unite and consecrate, the Church must itself be one
and holy, that is, it must have its foundation in God, independently
of the divided and sinful men who are in need of union and consecra
tion, and therefore cannot obtain it of themselves. The Church,
then, is in its essence the unity and holiness of the Godhead, not, how
ever, of the Godhead as such, but as abiding and acting in the world.
It is the Godhead in its other, the true substance of God-in-man.
The unity and the holiness of the Church are expressed in space
as its universality or catholicity, and in time, as apMtalic succession.
The meaning of catholicity (Ka^~oXo7™ according to or in
conformity with the whole) is that all the forms and activities
of the Church unite individuals and nations with the whole of
the divine humanity, both in its individual concentration the
Christ, and in its comprehensive form — the world of the incor
poreal powers and the departed saints living in God, and of the
faithful who are still fighting the battle here on earth. In so far
as everything in the Church is catholic, conformable to the absolute
whole, all exclusiveness of racial and personal characteristics and
of social position disappear in 'it. All divisions or separations dis
appear, and all the differences are left — for piety requires that unity
in God should be understood not as empty indifference and bare
uniformity, but as the absolute fulness of every life. There is
no division but there is difference between the invisible and the
visible Church, since the first is the hidden moving power of the
second, and the second the growing realisation of the first. The
two are one in essence but different in condition. There is no
division but there is difference in the visible Church between
the many tribes and nations to which, in their unity, the one spirit
speaks in different tongues of the one identical truth, and com
municates by different gifts and callings one and the same good.
Finally, there is no division but there is difference between the
Church as teaching and as taught, between the clergy and the

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 435

people, between the mind and the body of the Church. In a
similar manner the difference between husband and wife is not
an obstacle to, but the basis of, their perfect union.

IX

The catholicity of the Church — the fundamental form of the
moral organisation of humanity — is the conscious and intentional
unity between all the members of the universal body in relation
to the one absolute purpose of existence, a unity, accompanied by
complete division of c spiritual labour,' of gifts and services, by
which that purpose is expressed and realised. This moral unity
essentially differs by its voluntary and conscious character from
the natural unity of the organs in the body or the members in
the various natural groups. It forms a true brotherhood which
gives to man positive freedom and positive equality. The individual
does not enjoy true freedom when his social environment weighs
upon him as external and alien to him. Such alienation is abol
ished by the conception of the universal Church alone, according
to which each must find in the social whole not the external
limit but the inward completion of his liberty. Man in any case
stands in need of such completion by his ' other ' ; for in virtue
of his natural limitations he is necessarily a dependent being, and
cannot by himself or alone be a sufficient ground of his own
existence. Deprive man of what he owes to others, beginning
with his parents and ending with the state and the world-history,
and nothing will be left of his existence, let alone his freedom.
It would be madness to deny this fact of inevitable dependence.
Man is not strong enough and he needs help in order that his
freedom might be a real thing and not merely a verbal claim.
But the help which man obtains from the world is accidental,
temporal, and partial, whilst the universal Church promises him
secure, eternal and all-sufficient help from God. It is with that
help alone that he can be actually free, that is, have sufficient
power to satisfy his will. Man obviously cannot be truly free so
long as that which he does not want is inevitable, and that which
is demanded by his will is impossible. Every object of desire,
every good is only possible for man on condition that he himself
lives, and those whom he loves live also. There is therefore one

436 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

fundamental object of desire — the continuation of life, and one
fundamental object of aversion — death. But it is precisely in the
face of this that all worldly help proves to be of no avail. The
calamity of calamities — death — proves to be inevitable; and
the good of goods — immortality — utterly impossible. The world
then can give no real freedom to man. It is only God-in-
man, or the Church, based upon an inner unity and a perfect
harmony of the visible and the invisible life in the kingdom of
God — the Church affirming the essential primacy of spirit and
promising the final resurrection of the flesh, that alone discloses
to man the sphere in which his freedom can find positive realisa
tion, and his will — actual satisfaction. Whether we believe this
or not does not depend upon philosophical arguments. But
although the most perfect philosophy can neither give faith nor
take it away, the simplest art of logical reflection is sufficient to
show that man who wants to live and is sentenced to death cannot
be seriously regarded as free, and from the standpoint of the
world or of nature this no doubt is the position of every man
and of all mankind. It is then through the universal Church
alone that the individual can obtain positive freedom. In no
other way is positive equality possible for him either.

The natural dissimilarity of people is as inevitable as it is
desirable. It would be very regrettable if all men were spiritually
and physically alike, and in that case the multiplicity of men
would have no meaning. Direct equality between distinct parti
cular men is altogether impossible. They can be equal not in
themselves, but only in their common relationship to something
other, supreme and universal. Such is the equality of all before
the law, or equal civic rights. This equality of rights, important
as it is in the order of worldly existence, remains essentially formal
and negative. The law fixes certain general limits to human
activity, equally binding upon all and each, but it does not form the
content of any one's life, secures to no one the essential goods of
life, and indifferently leaves to some their helpless nothingness, and
to others the superabundance of all possible advantages. The world
may recognise as an abstract possibility or a theoretical right the
unconditional significance of each human being, but the realisation
of this possibility and this right is given by the Church alone. It
initiates each into the wholeness of the Divine life made manifest

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 437

in man, communicates to each the absolute content of life, and thus
equalises all — in the way similar to that in which all finite magni
tudes are equal to one another in relation to infinity. If in Christ
"dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" in the words of the
Apostle, and Christ lives in every believer, there can be no room
for inequality. Participation in the absolute content of life through
the universal Church, liberating and equalising all in a positive
way, makes of them one absolute whole or a perfect brotherhood.
In so far, however, as this brotherhood, perfect in nature,
is conditioned in origin, as established and matured in time, it
requires a corresponding expression for its connection with God-
in-man throughout the ages — it requires religious succession or
spiritual parentage. This demand is satisfied by the definition of
the Church as apostolic.

X

Since we live in time, the bond of our dependence upon the
divine principle as manifested in history must also be preserved in
time and handed down through it. In virtue of that bond our
present spiritual life begins not of itself^ but springs from the earlier
or older bearers of the grace of God. The one holy catholic Church
is of necessity an apostolic Church. Apostleship or messengership
is the opposite of imposture. Messengership is a religious basis of
activity and imposture — an anti-religious one. It is precisely with
reference to this point that Christ indicates the opposition between
Himself and the antichrist. " I am come in My Father's name
and ye receive Me not ; if another shall come in his own name^
him ye will receive." The primitive basis of religion, namely, the
pious recognition of one's dependence upon the progenitor, attains
its perfect expression in Christianity. " The Father sent Me."
" I do the will of Him Who sent me." The only-begotten Son is
pre-eminently a messenger, is essentially the apostle of God, and,
strictly speaking, the profound and eternal meaning of calling the
Church 'apostolic' refers to Him — and the other, the direct his
torical meaning, depends upon that. "As My Father has sent
Me, even so send I you " — the apostles born of Christ by the
word and the spirit are sent by Him to give spiritual birth to new
generations so that the eternal bond between the Father and the

438 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Son, the One Who sends and the One Who is sent, should be
continually handed down through time.

Filial relationship is the archetype of piety , and the only-begotten
Son of God — the Son by pre-eminence — is the individual embodi
ment of piety itself. The Church as the collective organisation of
piety must be entirely determined by Him in its social structure,
in its doctrine and holy practices. Christ as the incarnation of
piety is the way, the truth, and the life of His Church.

The way of piety for all that exists (with the exception, of
course, of the First Beginning and the First Object of all piety)
consists in starting not with oneself or with what is lower, but
with the higher, the senior, the preceding. It is the way of
hierarchy, of holy succession and tradition. Therefore whatever
external forms the order of the Church government might assume
under the influence of historical conditions, the strictly ecclesiastical
religious form — ordination through the laying on of hands — always
proceeds in the hierarchical order, from above downwards. Lay
men may not ordain their spiritual fathers, and indeed the clergy
themselves must necessarily be arranged in order of degrees so
that those of the highest degree — the bishops — alone represent the
active principle itself, and transfer the grace of consecration to the
two other orders.

The truth of the Church depends upon the same piety, though
in another way, or in another, theoretic respect. The truth of the
Church, revealing to us the mind of Christ, is neither scientific
nor philosophical, nor even theological— --it contains nothing but
dogmas of piety. This fact is the key to the understanding of
Christian dogmatism, and of the Councils that were engaged in
formulating it. With regard to religious teaching the interest
of piety is obviously concerned with the fact that our conceptions
of the Deity should not in any way detract from the fulness of our
religious attitude to it, given once for all in Christ as the Son of
God and the Son of Man. All 'heresies ' from which the Church
protected itself by its dogmatic definitions denied, in one way or
another, this religious fulness or the entirety and completeness of
our adoption by God through the perfect God-man. Some re
garded Christ as a half-god, others as a half-man ; some put
a kind of double personality in the place of the one God-man,
others limited His nature as God -man to the intelligible side

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 439

alone, and regarded the divinity as incapable of sensible expres
sion, etc.1

The lawful way of the hierarchical order, as well as the truth
of faith, finds its fulfilment and justification in the life of the
Church. Human life must be inwardly collected, united, and
consecrated by the action of God and thus transformed into a
divinely-human life. The nature of the case and the principle of
piety demand that the process of regeneration should begin from
above, from God, that it should be founded upon the effects of
grace and not upon the natural human will alone — it demands
that the process should be divinely-human and not humanly-
divine. This is the meaning of sacraments as the special founda
tion of the new life. The moral significance of sacraments in
general consists, from the point of view of religious morality or
piety, precisely in this — that in sacraments man adopts his proper
attitude of absolute dependence upon a perfectly real and yet per
fectly mysterious, sensuously unknowable good which is given to
him and not created by him. In the presence of the sacrament
the human will renounces all that is its own^ remains in a state of
perfect potentiality or purity, and in virtue of it becomes capable,
as pure form, of receiving superhuman content. Through sacra
ments the one and holy essence, which is the Church in itself (the
Ding an sich or the noumenon of the Church, to use philosophic
language), actually unites to itself or absorbs into itself the inner
being of man and renders his life divine.

This life, supernatural so far as the other kingdoms of nature,
including the rationally-human, are concerned, but perfectly natural
for the kingdom of God, has its regular cycle of development, the
chief moments of which are signalised by the Church in the seven
sacraments especially so called. This life comes to birth (in baptism),
receives the beginning of a right organisation and the power to
grow and develop (in confirmation), is healed from accidental im
perfections (in penitence), nurtured for eternity (in Eucharist) j it

1 The profound and important significance of the dogmatic disputes dealing with the
very essence of the Christian religion or piety I have more definitely indicated else
where. See, e.g., Veliki spor i christianskaya politika (The Great Dispute and Christian
Policy) (1883), Dogmatitcheskoe rawitie tserk-vi (The Dogmatic Development of the Church}
(1886), La Russie et I'Eglise universelle (1889). This significance is particularly clear
in the dispute concerning the ikons which in the Christian East completed the circle of
the dogmatic development.

440 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

completes or integrates the individual being of man (in marriage),
creates spiritual fatherland as the basis of the true social order
(in ordination), and, finally (in extreme unction), sanctifies the
diseased and dying bodily nature for the perfect wholeness of
future resurrection.1

XI

The real and mysterious tokens of the higher life or the
Kingdom of God, received in the sacraments of the Church, do
not in their origin and their essence depend upon the will of man.
But since this higher life is the divinely-human life^ our part in it
cannot be merely passive. It demands a conscious and voluntary
co-operation of the human soul with the supreme Spirit. The
positive strength for such co-operation is from the very first given
by the grace of God (disregard of this truth leads to the dangerous
errors of semi-Pelagianism), but it is received by the will of man,
which formally differs from the divine will ; and it is manifested
in actions which spring from the human will. Disregard of this
second truth, which is as important as the first, found expression
in the Monothelite heresy, so far as Christology is concerned, and
in Quietism in the sphere of the moral doctrine.

The specifically-human actions conformable to the grace of
God (and caused by its preliminary influence) must obviously
express man's normal relation to. God, men, and to his own material
nature, in accordance with the three' general foundations of
morality — piety, pity, and shame. The first concentrated active ex
pression of the religious feeling or piety — its chief work — is prayer ;
in the same way, the work of pity is almsgiving, and the work of
shame is abstinence or fasting,2 These three works condition the
beginning and the development of the new life of grace in man.
This is depicted with wonderful clearness and simplicity in the
holy narrative about the devout centurion Cornelius, " which gave
much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway." In his own
words, " I was fasting until this hour : and at the ninth hour I

1 This is discussed more fully in my DuAo-vnia osno-vi xhizni (The Spiritual Founda
tions of Life) and La Russie et 1'Eglise universelle (last chapter).

2 These three religiously moral works are dealt with at length in the first part of
the Duhovnlya osnovi -zhizni.

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 441

prayed in my house; and, behold, a man stood before me in bright
clothing, and said, Cornelius, thy prayer is heard, and thine alms
are had in remembrance in the sight of God " (then follows the
command to send for Simon, who has the words of salvation).
The hidden anticipatory effect of God's grace, which Cornelius
did not reject, incited him to do human good and strengthened him
in the works of prayer, almsgiving, and fasting ; and these works
themselves, as is here directly indicated, called forth new manifest
effects of the Divine grace. It is noteworthy, too, that just as
the appearance of the angel from heaven was simply an exceptional
means of carrying out the established method of piety and sending
for the earthly messenger of God, the earthly mediator of the
higher life and truth, so the exceptional and abundant pouring out
of the gift of the Holy Ghost on Cornelius and his household after
Peter's preaching at his house did not render superfluous for them
the usual and, so to speak, the organic method of beginning the
life of grace through the real and mystical means of baptism.1

This typical narrative is still more remarkable for what it does
not contain. Neither the angel of God nor Peter the apostle of
Christ's peace, nor the voice of the Holy Spirit Himself, suddenly
revealed in the newly converted, told the centurion of the Italian
band that which, according to the recent interpretation of Christi
anity, was the most important and urgently necessary thing for
this Roman soldier. They did not tell him that in becoming a
Christian he had first of all to lay down his arms, and was bound
to give up military service. This supposed necessary demand of
Christianity is not even hinted at in the narrative, although it is
concerned with a soldier. Refusal to do military service does
certainly not form part of the New Testament idea of what is
required of a warrior of this world in order that he might become a
citizen with full rights in the kingdom of God. In addition to the
things the centurion Cornelius was already doing, namely, prayer,
almsgiving, fasting, — he had " to call Simon, whose surname is
Peter : ... lie shall tell thee what thou oughtest to do." And when
Peter came, Cornelius said to him, "Now therefore are we all here
present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of
God." But the things which God commanded the apostle to
reveal to the Roman soldier for his salvation contained no reference

1 Acts x.

442 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

to military service. "Then Peter opened his mouth and said,
Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons : but in
every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is
accepted with him. The word which God sent unto the children
of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ : (he is Lord of all :)
that word, I say, ye know, which was published throughout
all Judaea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John
preached ; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy
Ghost and with power ; who went about doing good, and healing
all that were oppressed of the devil : for God was with him.
And we are witnesses of all things which he did, both in the land
of the Jews, and in Jerusalem ; whom they slew and hanged on a
tree ; him God raised up the third day, and shewed him openly ;
not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God,
even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the
dead. And he commanded us to preach unto the people, and to
testify that it is he which was ordained of God to be the Judge
of quick and dead. To him give all the prophets witness, that
through his name whosoever believeth in him shall receive remis
sion of sins. While Peter yet spake these words, the Holy Ghost
fell on all them which heard the word."

I am dwelling upon the story of Cornelius the centurion, not
because I want to raise once more the question of military service,1
but because this story seems to me to throw clear light on the
general question as to the relation of the Church to the state, of
Christianity to the empire, of the Kingdom of God to the kingdom
of this world, or, what is the same thing, on the question of the
Christian state. If the centurion Cornelius, having become a real
Christian, remained, nevertheless, a soldier, and was not divided
into two alien and disconnected personalities, it is clear that he
must have become a Christian soldier. A collection of such soldiers
forms a Christian army. Now the army is both the extreme
expression and the first real basis of the state ; and if a Christian
army is possible, a Christian state is therefore even more possible.
That the historical Christianity solved the question precisely
in this sense there can be no doubt. The only thing that can
be called in question is the inner ground for that solution.

1 See above, Chapter IX., ' The Significance of War.'

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 443

XII

When the centurion Cornelius was a pagan, the same feeling
of pity which impelled him c to give much alms' also urged him,
no doubt, to defend the weak from injuries and to force violent
and aggressive men to obey the law. He knew that law, like
every human utility, is only a relative good and may be abused ;
he may have heard of the revolting abuse of legal authority which
the procurator Pontius allowed when, under the influence of the
envious and vindictive priesthood of Jerusalem, he sentenced to
death the virtuous Rabbi from Nazareth. But being a just man,
Cornelius knew also that abusus non tollit usum^ and deduced no
general conclusions from exceptional instances. A true Roman —
to judge by his name, — he was conscious with noble pride of his
own share in the destiny of the city that ruled the world :

... to make the world obey,
To tame the proud, the fetter'd slave to free.

And it was not for him an abstract conviction. In Palestine,
where his band was stationed, it was Roman arms alone that put
a stop, for a time at any rate, to the fierce intestine wars between
different dynasties and parties, accompanied by savage slaughter.
And it was only under the aegis of the Roman power that the
neighbouring clans of the Edomites and the Arabs gradually
emerged out of the condition of continual wars and crude
barbarism.

Cornelius then did not err in thinking highly of his vocation,
and in considering the state and its chief organ, the army, a power
necessary for the common good. Ought he to have changed his
judgment when he became a Christian ? A new, higher, and
purely spiritual life was revealed in him, but this fact did not
abolish the evil outside of him. The pity which justified his
military calling referred precisely to those who were suffering
from the external evil, which remained what it was. Or perhaps
the higher life revealed in him, ought, without abolishing the
external evil, to have abolished the inward good in him — the pity
or charity which was * remembered by God,' and to have replaced
it by indifference to the sufferings of others. Such indifference or
unfeelingness, however, is the distinctive mark of the stone — of

444 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the lower and not of the higher grade of being. But perhaps, in
addition to compassion, the Christian receives, together with the
new life, a special power to overcome every external evil without
resisting it by force — to overcome it by immediate moral effect
alone, or by the miracle of grace. This supposition is remarkably
ill-founded and is based upon a complete misunderstanding both
of the nature of grace and of its moral conditions. We know that
Christ Himself encountered upon earth such human environment
that His grace could not work miracles l because of their unbelief.'
We know that in the very best environment — in the midst of His
apostles — He found ' the son of perdition.' We know that of the
two thieves who were crucified only one repented. It is uncertain
whether he would have been susceptible to the Divine grace under
other circumstances, but it is quite certain that his comrade
remained inaccessible to it even under these circumstances.

Those who affirm that every evil-doer may be all at once con
verted to the good and restrained from crime by the immediate
effect of the inner power of grace alone, do not in the least
realise the meaning of what they are saying. So far as the
inward, purely-spiritual power of the good is concerned, its dis
tinctive characteristic lies precisely in the fact that it does not
work like a mechanical agency which inevitably produces external
physical changes, but that it acts only on condition of being
inwardly received by the person upon whom it acts — a truth
which, one would have thought, the case of Judas made obvious
to the blind.

The power of the grace of Christ affected men who were
sinful owing to the infirmity of the flesh and not owing to the
firmness of the evil will— men who were not happy in their sins,
but suffered from them and felt the need of a physician. It was
of these sick ready to be healed Christ said that they will enter
the kingdom of heaven before the self-righteous, and this precisely
was the reason why the latter hated Him and reproached Him
for condescending to mix with publicans and sinners. But
even His enemies could find no pretext to accuse Him of con
doning bloodthirsty murderers, impious blasphemers, shameless
seducers, and professional criminals of all kinds, enemies of
human society. But, it will be said, He left them in peace.
There was, however, no occasion for Him to deal with them

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 445

since there existed Roman and Jewish authorities whose business
it was precisely to restrain evil, as far as possible, by compulsion.

According to both the spirit and the letter of the Gospel we
must not appeal to the powers that be for enforced defence of
ourselves against attacks on our person or property. I ought not
to drag into the law court and prison the man who strikes me or
walks away with my fur coat. I ought with all my heart to
forgive the wrong-doer for the wrong which he does me, and not
to offer any resistance to him so far as I alone am concerned.
This is clear and obvious. It is clear, too, that I must not give
way to evil feeling against the person who wrongs my neighbours
— him, too, I must forgive in my heart and regard him as a fellow-
man. What practical duty, however, does the moral principle
impose upon us in that case ? Can my duty be actually the same
in the case of my own injury and that of another ? To allow
injury to myself means to sacrifice myself, and is a moral act ; to
allow injury to others means sacrificing others, and this can certainly
not be called self-sacrifice. The moral duty towards others, psycho
logically based upon pity, must not in practice give rights to
violent men and evil-doers alone. Peaceful and weak persons also
have a right to our active pity or help. And since, as individuals,
we are unable to give continual and sufficient help to all the
injured, we must do this in our collective capacity, that is, through
the state. Political organisation is a naturally-human good, as
necessary to our life as our physical organism is necessary to it.
In giving us a higher spiritual good Christianity does not deprive
us of the lower, natural goods — it does not pull from under our
feet the ladder which we are mounting.

With the coming of Christianity and the good news of the
Kingdom of God, the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms
did not disappear. And if they have not been abolished, there is
no reason why the naturally-human kingdom, embodied in political
organisation, should be abolished either, since it is just as necessary
in the historical process as the others are in the cosmical. Nothing
could be more absurd than to maintain that although we cannot
cease to be animals we ought to cease being citizens.

The fact that the purpose of Christ's coming to the earth
could not consist in creating a kingdom of this world or a state —
which had already been founded long ago — in no way proves that

446 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

He took up a negative attitude with regard to the state. The
circumstance that the Gospel does not deal with the external
means of protecting humanity from the crudely-destructive effect
of the powers of evil could entitle us to draw conclusions only
if the Gospel had appeared before the foundation of the state,
in a community that had neither law nor authority nor organised
justice. There was no need to give in the Gospel over again the
principles of civic and juridical order which had, many centuries
before, been already given in the Pentateuch. If Christ did not
intend to reject them, He could do nothing but confirm them,
and this was precisely what He did. " One jot or one tittle shall
in no wise pass from the law. . . . Think not that I am come
to destroy the law. ... 1 am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."

But, it will be urged, the grace and truth manifested in Christ
made the law void. Now, when exactly did this happen ? Was
it when Judas betrayed his master, or when Ananias and Sapphira
deceived the Apostles, or when the deacon Nicolas introduced
sexual laxity under the pretext of brotherhood, or when a
Christian of Corinth was guilty of incest ? Or was it when the
Spirit wrote through the prophet of the New Testament to the
Churches and said to the representative of one of them, " I know
thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead "
(Rev. iii. i) ; and to another, " I know thy works, that thou art
neither cold nor hot : I would thou wert cold or hot. So then
because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue
thee out of my mouth " (vv. 15, 16).

If then, from the time grace and truth first appeared and to this
day, they have not taken possession either of the whole nor even
of the majority of Christian humanity, the question is how and in
whom has the law been made void. Could the law have been
made void by grace in those who have neither law nor grace ?
It is obvious that for them, that is, for the majority of mankind,
the law must, according to the word of Christ, remain in full
force as the external limit of their liberty. And in order to be
such a limit, the law must possess sufficient power of compulsion,
that is, must be embodied in the organisation of the State with
its law courts, police, armies. And in so far as Christianity did
not abolish the law, it could not abolish the State. This necessary
and rational fact does not, however, by any means prove that the

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 447

inner relation of men to the external force embodied in the state,
and consequently the general and particular character of its
activity, remained unchanged. Chemical substance does not
disappear in vegetable and animal bodies, but acquires new
peculiarities in them, so that there exists a whole science of
organic chemistry. The case of Christian policy is similar. A
Christian state must, if it is not a mere name, distinctly differ
from a heathen state, though as states both have the same basis
and common aim.

XIII

"A peasant goes forth into the fields to his husbandry; a
Polovets falls upon him, slays him, and drives away his horse.
Then in a crowd the Polovtsi come out against the village, kill
all the peasants, set fire to the houses and lead the women away
into captivity, while the princes are taken up with feuds among
themselves."1 If pity for these peasants was not to be confined
to sentimental words alone, it was bound to lead to the organisation
of a strong central authority sufficient to defend the peasants from
intestine wars between the princes and the raids of the Polovtsi.

When, in another country, the greatest of her poets ex
claimed with profound grief, which he showed not in words only :

Ahi, serva Italia dei dolor* ostello,
Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta ! 2

— the same pity directly incited him to call from beyond - the
Alps a supreme representative of state authority, a strong pro
tector from incessant and unbearable acts of violence. The pity
for the actual calamities of Italy, expressed in many passages of
the Divine Comedy^ and the appeal for a state invested with the
fulness of power as a necessary means of salvation took the form
of a definite, well-thought-out conviction in Dante's book On
Monarchy.

The troubles of anarchy or of a weakly-developed state, that
called forth the pity of Vladimir Monomakh and of Dante, can

1 From the Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh, one of the rulers of Russia in the
eleventh century, to his children. — Translator's Note.

2 " Italy, the slave and the abode of suffering, a ship without a pilot amidst terrible
storms."

448 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

only be cured or remedied by a powerful state, and would inevit
ably arise again if it disappeared. The purely moral motives were
obviously insufficient in the thirteenth century to prevent men
from trying to exterminate one another. And even granting that
at the present day these motives have become stronger and more
widely spread — though this is doubtful, — it would be ridiculous to
maintain that they are in themselves sufficient for the maintenance
of peace. It is obvious that Italian citizens no longer give vent
to their party differences by cutting each other's throats solely
because of the compulsory order of the state with its army and
police. As to Russia — not to speak of the intestine wars among
the princes, and of the people taking the law into their own hands,
— there is no doubt that the savage races which the duchy of
Moscow and the Russian empire had with such difficulty gradu
ally driven farther and farther away from the centre of the country,
submitted to force rather than became regenerated. And if, God
forbid, the lance and the bayonet were to disappear or to lose their
force on the Caucasian, Turkestan, or Siberian frontier all moralists
would become at once convinced of the true nature of these ex
cellent institutions.1

yust as the Church is collectively organised piety^ so the state is
collectively organised pity. To affirm, therefore, that from its very
nature the Christian religion is opposed to the state is to affirm
that the Christian religion is opposed to pity. In truth, however,
the Gospel not merely insists upon the morally binding character of
pity or altruism, but decidedly confirms the view, expressed already
in the Old Testament, that there can be no true piety apart from
pity : " I will have mercy and not sacrifice."

If, however, pity be admitted in principle, it is logically inevit
able to admit also the historical organisation of social forces and
activities,, which raises pity from the stage of a powerless and
limited feeling and gives it actuality, wide application, and means
of development. From the point of view of pity it is impossible

1 My father had as a boy heard first-hand reminiscences of how armed bands of
Mongolians on the Volga engaged in open brigandage carried away into captivity whole
families of Russian travellers and tormented them in all sorts of ways. At the present
time this no longer happens on the Volga, but on the Amur such things are still known
to take place. The perpetual war mission of the state is therefore not yet over for
Russia, and, had the good centurion Cornelius lived in our day, no moral motives could
prevent him from being a sotnik of the Kossacks in the Ussuriisky region.

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 449

to reject the institution owing to which one can practically pity,
i.e. give help and protection to tens and hundreds of millions of men
instead of dozens or at most hundreds of people.

The definition of the state (so far as its moral significance is
concerned) as organised pity can only be rejected through miscon
ception. Some of these misconceptions must be considered before
we go on to deal with the conception of the Christian state.

XIV

It is urged that the stern and often cruel character of the state
obviously contradicts the definition of it as organised pity. But
this objection is based on a confusion between the necessary and
sensible severity and useless and arbitrary cruelty. The first is
not opposed to pity, and the second, being an abuse, is opposed to
the very meaning of the state, and therefore does not contradict the
definition of the state — of the normal state, of course — as organised
pity. The supposed contradiction is based upon grounds as super
ficial as the argument that the senseless cruelty of an unsuccessful
surgical operation and the sufferings of the patient in the case even
of a successful operation are in obvious contradiction to the idea
of surgery as a beneficent art helpful to man in certain bodily
sufferings. It is obvious that such representatives of state authority
as Ivan the Terrible are as little evidence against the altruistic
basis of the state, as bad surgeons are against the usefulness of
surgery. I am aware that an educated reader may well feel in
sulted at being reminded of such elementary truths, but if he is

acquainted with the recent movement of thought in Russia he

.* . °

will not hold me responsible for the insult.

But, it will be maintained, even the most normal state is
inevitably pitiless. In pitying peaceful people whom it defends
against men of violence, it is bound to treat the latter without
pity. Such one-sided pity is out of keeping with the moral ideal.
This is indisputable, but again it says nothing against our defini
tion of the state, for, in the first place, even one-sided pity is pity
and not anything else ; and secondly, even the normal state is not
by any means an expression of the moral ideal already attained, but
only one of the chief means necessary for its attainment. The
ideal condition of mankind, or the Kingdom of God, when attained,

2 G

450 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

is obviously incompatible with the state, but it is also incompatible
with pity. When everything will once more be good there will
be no one to pity. And so long as there are men to be pitied, there
are men to be defended j and the moral demand for organising
such protection efficiently and on a wide scale — i.e. the moral
significance of the state — remains in force. As for the pitiless-
ness of the state to those from whom or against whom it has to
defend the peaceful society, it is not anything fatal or inevitable ;
and although it undoubtedly is a fact, it is not an unchangeable
fact. In point of history there is no doubt that the relation of
the state towards its enemies is becoming less cruel, and conse
quently more merciful. In old days they used to be put to painful
death together with their family and relatives (as is still the case
in China). Later, every one had to answer for himself, and sub
sequently the very character of the responsibility has changed.
Criminals have ceased to be tormented solely for the sake of inflict
ing pain ; and at the present time the positive task of helping them
morally is recognised. What can be the ultimate reason of such a
change ? When the state limits or abolishes the penalty of death,
abolishes torture and corporal punishment, is concerned with im
proving prisons and places of exile, it is obvious that in pitying
and protecting peaceful citizens who suffer from crimes, it begins
to extend its pity to the opposite side also — to the criminals them
selves. The reference, therefore, to the one-sided pity is beginning
to lose force as a fact. And it is through the state alone that the
organisation of pity ceases to be one-sided, since the human crowd
is still for the most part guided in its relation to the enemies of
society by the old pitiless maxims, ' to the dog, a dog's death ' ;
1 the thief deserves all he gets ' ; ' as a warning to others,' etc.
Such maxims are losing their practical force precisely owing to
the state, which is in this case more free from partiality either to
the one side or the other. Restraining with an authoritative hand
the vindictive instincts of the crowd, ready to tear the criminal
to pieces, the state at the same time never renounces the humane
duty to oppose crimes, — as the strange moralists, who in truth
pity only the aggressive, violent, and rapacious, and are utterly
indifferent to their victims, would have it do. This indeed is a
case of one-sided pity ! l

1 See above, Part III. Chapter VI., ' The Penal Question from the Moral Point of View.'

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 451

XV

Our definition of state may lead to a less crude misconception
on the part of the jurists, who regard the state as the embodiment
of legality as an absolutely independent principle, distinct from
morality in general and from motives of pity in particular. The
true distinction between legal justice and morality has already
been indicated.1 It does not destroy the connection between
them ; on the contrary, it is due to that connection. If this dis
tinction is to be replaced by separation and opposition, an uncon
ditional principle must be found which shall ultimately determine
every legal relation as such and be altogether outside of, and as far
as possible removed from, the moral sphere.

Such an a-moral and even anti-moral principle is to be found
in the first place in might or force : Macht geht vor Recht. That
in the order of history relations based upon right follow those
based upon force is as unquestionable as the fact that in the his
tory of our planet the organic life appeared after the inorganic
and on the basis of it — which does not prove, of course, that
inorganic matter is the specific principle of the organic forms as
such. The play of natural forces in humanity is simply the
material for relations determined by the conception of right and
not the principle of such relations, since otherwise there could be
no distinction between right and rightlessness. Right means the
limitation of might, and the whole point is the nature of the
limitation. Similarly, morality might be defined as the overcoming
of evil, which does not imply that evil is the principle of morality.

We shall not advance any further in the definition of right ir
we replace the conception of might, derived from the physical
sphere, by the more human conception of freedom. That
individual freedom lies at the basis of all relations determined by
law there can be no doubt, but is it really the unconditional
principle of legality ? There are two reasons why this cannot
be the case. In the first place, because in reality it is not uncon
ditional, and, secondly, because it is not the determining principle
of legality. With regard to the first point, I mean not that
human freedom is never unconditional, but that it is not uncon-

1 See above, Part III. Chapter VIII., ' Morality and Legal Justice.'

452 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

ditional in that sphere of concrete relations in which and for the
sake of which law exists. Suppose that some man living in the
flesh on earth actually possessed absolute freedom, that is, that he
could by the act of his will alone, independently of any external
circumstances and necessary intermediate processes, accomplish
everything he wished. It is obvious that such a man would
stand outside the sphere of relations determined by legality. If
his unconditionally free will determined itself on the side of evil,
no external action could limit it ; it would be inaccessible to law
and authority. And if it were determined on the side of the
good it would make all law and all authority superfluous.

It is then irrelevant to speak of unconditional freedom in
this connection, since it belongs to quite a different sphere of
relations. Legality is concerned only with limited and conditional
freedom, and the question is precisely as to what limitations or
conditions are lawful. The liberty of one person is limited by
the liberty of another, but not every such limitation is consistent
with the principle of legality. If the freedom of one man is
limited by the freedom of his neighbour who is free to wring his
neck or chain him up at his pleasure, there can be no question of
legality at all, and in any case such a limitation of freedom shows
no specific characteristics of the principle of legality as such.
These characteristics must be sought not in the mere fact of the
limitation of freedom, but in the equal and universal character of
the limitation. If the freedom of one is limited to the same
extent as the freedom of the other, or if the free activity of each
meets with a restriction that is common to all, then only is the
limitation of freedom determined by the conception of law.

The principle of legality is then freedom within the limits of
equality, or freedom conditioned by equality — consequently a
conditional freedom. But the equality which determines it is
not an absolutely independent principle either. The essential
characteristic of the legal norms is that, in addition to equality,
they should necessarily answer, too, the demand for justice.
Although these two ideas are akin, they are far from being identical.
When the Pharaoh issued a law commanding to put to death all
the Jewish new-born babes, this law was certainly not unjust
on account of the unequal treatment of the Jewish and the
Egyptian babes. And if the Pharaoh subsequently gave orders to

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 453

put to death all new-born infants and not only the Jewish ones,
no one would venture to call this new law just, although it
would satisfy the demand for equality. Justice is not mere
equality, but equality in fulfilling that which is right. A just
debtor is not one who equally refuses to pay all his creditors but
who equally pays them all. A just father is not one who is
equally indifferent to all his children but who shows equal love
for all of them.

Equality, then, can be just or unjust, and it is the just equality
or, in the last resort, justice that determines the legal norms.
The conception of justice at once introduces us into the moral
sphere. And in that sphere we know that each virtue is not in a
cage by itself, but all of them, justice among them, are different
modifications of one or, rather, of the threefold principle which
determines our rightful relation to everything. And since justice
is concerned with man's moral interaction with his fellow- beings,
it is merely a species of the moral motive which lies at the basis
of inter-human relations, namely of pity : justice is pity equally
applied.1

In so far then as legality is determined by justice it is
essentially related to the moral sphere. All definitions of law
which try to separate it from morality leave its real nature un
touched. Thus, in addition to the definition already mentioned,
lering's famous definition declares that Maw is a protected or
safeguarded interest.' There can be no doubt that law does
defend interest, but not every interest. It obviously defends
only the just interests or, in other words, it defends every interest
in so far as it is just. What, however, is meant by justice in
this connection ? To say that a just interest is an interest safe
guarded by law is to be guilty of the crudest possible logical
circle which can only be avoided if justice be once more taken in
its essential, i.e. in its moral, sense. This does not prevent us
from recognising that the moral principle itself, so far as the
inevitable conditions of its existence are concerned, is realised in
different ways, and to a greater or lesser degree. For instance
there is the distinction between the external, formal, or strictly-
legal justice and the inner, essential, or purely-moral justice, the
supreme and ultimate standard of right and wrong being one and

1 See above, Part I. Chapter V., ' Virtues.'

454 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

the same — namely, the moral principle. Possible conflict between
'outer ' and ' inner ' justice in particular cases is in itself no argu
ment against their being essentially one, since similar conflict may
arise in the carrying out of the simplest and most fundamental
moral demands. Thus, for instance, pity may demand that I
should save two men who are drowning, but being unable to save
both, I have to choose between the two. The cases of difficult
choice between complex applications of legal justice and morality
in the strict sense are no proof of there being any essential and
irreducible opposition between the two. The argument that the
conceptions of justice and morality alter in the course of history
is equally unconvincing. It might carry some weight if the rights
and laws remained meanwhile unchanged. In truth, however, they
change even more according to place and time. What conclusion,
then, are we to adopt ? There is change in the particular con
ceptions of justice, there is change in the rights and laws, but one
thing remains unchangeable : the demand that the rights and
laws should be just. The inner dependence of legal forms upon
morality— independently of all external conditions — remains a
fact. To avoid this conclusion one would have to go very far —
to the country, seen by the pilgrim women in Ostrovsky's play,
where lawful requests to Mahmut of Persia and Mahmut of
Turkey were to begin by the phrase "Judge me, O thou unjust
judge."

I'ering's definition undergoes a change in the formula accord
ing to which law discriminates between interests in contradistinc
tion to morality which values them. There can be no doubt that
legal justice discriminates between people's interests and, equally,
that it defends them. But this fact alone gives as yet no idea
of the essence of legality. There may be discrimination of
interests on grounds which have nothing to do with legality, and
the definition thus proves to be too wide. Thus if robbers in a
wood attack the travellers and leave them their life but seize all
their property, this will no doubt be a case of the discrimination
of interests, but to see in it anything in common with legal right
is only possible in the sense in which all violence is the expres
sion of the right of the fist, or the right of brute force. In
truth, legality is determined not of course by the fact of the
discrimination between interests, but by the constant and universal

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 455

norm of such discrimination. To be consistent with the concep
tion of right, the discrimination of interests must be correct,
normal, or just. In drawing a distinction between the normal
and the abnormal discrimination of interests, and referring the first
only to the province of legal justice, we obviously make a valuation
of them, and therefore the supposed opposition between legality
and morality falls to the ground. When we find some laws to be
unjust and work for their repeal, then, though we do not leave
the domain of legality, we are concerned not with any real dis
crimination of interests, but in the first place with valuing the
already existing discrimination, which in its own day was also
conditioned by judgments of value, though they were different
from those we pass now and opposed to them.

If morality then be defined as the valuation of interests, legal
justice forms an essential part of morality. This is by no means
contradicted by the fact that the standard of value in morality in
the strict sense and in the legal sphere is not the same. This
difference, the necessity, namely, for recognising legal relations
apart from the purely -moral ones, is itself based upon moral
grounds — upon the demand, namely, that the highest, the final
good should be realised apart from any external compulsion, and
that, consequently, there should be some possibility of choice
between good and evil. Or, to put it in a paradoxical form, the
highest morality demands a certain freedom to be immoral. This
demand is carried out by legal justice which compels the individual
to do the minimum of good necessary to the social life, and, in
the interest of the truly moral, that is, of free perfection, safe
guards him from the senseless and pernicious experiments in
compulsory righteousness and obligatory holiness.1

Thus if the state is the objective expression of right, it
necessarily forms part of the moral organisation of humanity,
which is binding upon the good will.

XVI

The connection of right with morality makes it possible to
speak of the Christian state. It would be unjust to maintain
that in pre-Christian times the state had no moral foundation.

1 See above, Part III. Chapter VIII., ' Morality and Legal Justice.'

456 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

In the kingdoms of Judaea and of Israel, the prophets directly
put moral demands to the state, and reproached it for not ful
filling these demands. In the pagan world it is sufficient to
mention Theseus, for instance, who at the risk of his life freed
his subjects from the cannibalistic tribute to Crete, in order to
recognise that here too the fundamental moral motive of the state
was pity, demanding active help to the injured and the suffering.
The difference between the Christian and the pagan state is not
then in their natural basis but in something else. From the
Christian point of view the state is only a part in the organisation
of the collective man — a part conditioned by another higher part,
the Church, which consecrates the state in its work of serving
indirectly in its own worldly sphere and by its own means the
unconditional purpose which the Church directly puts before it —
to prepare humanity and the whole earth for the Kingdom of God.
From this follow the two chief tasks of the state — the conservative
and the progressive: to preserve the foundations of social life apart
from which humanity could not exist , and to improve the conditions of
its existence by furthering the free development of all human
powers which are to be the instrument of the future perfection,
and apart from which the Kingdom of God could not be
realised in humanity. It is clear that just as without the con
servative activity of the state humanity would fall apart and there
would be no one left to enter the fulness of life, so without its
progressive activity mankind would always remain at the same
stage of the historical process,' would never attain the power
finally to receive or to reject the Kingdom of God, and therefore
there would be nothing to live for.

In paganism it was the conservative task of the state that was
exclusively predominant. Although the state furthered historical
progress, it did so involuntarily and unconsciously. The supreme
purpose of action was not put by the agents themselves, it was
not their purpose since they had not yet heard ' the gospel of the
kingdom.' The progress itself, therefore, although it formally
differed from the gradual perfecting of the kingdoms of the
physical nature did not really have a purely-human character : it
is unworthy of man to move in spite of himself to a purpose he
does not know. God's word gives a beautiful image of the great
heathen kingdoms as powerful and wonderful beasts which rapidly

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 457

appear and disappear. The natural, earthly men have no final
significance, and cannot have it ; and the state, created by such
men, is their collective embodiment. But the pagan state, con
ditional and transitory in nature, affirmed itself as unconditional.
Pagans began by deifying individual bodies (astral, vegetable,
animal, and especially human) in the multitude of their various
gods, and they ended by deifying the collective body — the state
(cult of the kings in the Eastern kingdoms, the apotheosis of the
Roman emperors).

The pagans erred not in ascribing positive significance to the
state, but only in thinking that it possessed that significance on
its own account. This was obviously untrue. Neither the in
dividual nor the collective body of man has life on its own account
but receives it from the spirit that inhabits it. This is clearly
proved by the fact of the decomposition both of the individual
and of the collective bodies. The perfect body is that in which
dwells the spirit of God. Christianity, therefore, demands not
that we should reject or limit the power of the state, but that we
should fully recognise the principle which alone may render the
significance of the state actually complete — namely, its moral
solidarity with the cause of the Kingdom of God on earth, all
worldly purposes being inwardly subordinated to the one spirit of
Christ.

XVII

The question as to the relation of the Church to the state,
which has arisen in Christian times, can be solved in principle
from the point of view here indicated. The Church is, as we
know, a divinely-human organisation, morally determined by piety.
From the nature of the case the Divine principle decidedly pre
dominates in the Church over the human. In the relation
between them the first is pre-eminently active and the second pre
eminently passive. This obviously must be the case when the
human will is in direct correlation with the Divine. The active
manifestation of the human will, demanded by the Deity itself,
is only possible in the worldly sphere collectively represented by
the state, which had reality previously to the revelation of the
Divine principle, and is in no direct dependence upon it. The

458 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

Christian state is related to the Deity, as the Church is ; it too
is in a certain sense an organisation of the God-in-man, but in
it the human element predominates. This is only possible
because the Divine principle is realised not in the state, but
for it in the Church. So that in the state the Divine principle
gives full play to the human and allows it independently to serve
the supreme end. From the moral point of view both the in
dependent activity of man and his absolute submission to the
Deity as such are equally necessary. This antinomy can only be
solved and the two positions united by distinguishing the two
spheres of life (the religious and the political), and their two
immediate motives (piety and pity), corresponding to the difference
in the immediate object of action, the final purpose being one
and the same. Pious attitude towards a perfect God demands
pity for men. The Christian church demands a Christian state.
Here as elsewhere separation instead of distinction leads to confusion^
and confusion to dissension and perdition. Complete separation
of the .Church from the state compels the Church to do one of
two things. It either has to renounce all active service of the
good and to give itself up to quietism and indifference — which is
contrary to the spirit of Christ ; or, zealous actively to prepare
the world for the coming of God's kingdom, but, in its separation
and alienation from the state, having no means at its command for
carrying out its spiritual activity, the Church, in the person of its
authoritative representatives has itself to seize the concrete instru
ments of worldly activity, to interfere in all earthly affairs and,
absorbed in the question of means, forget its original purpose —
an unquestionably pure and high one — more and more. Were
such confusion allowed to become permanent, the Church would
lose the very ground of its existence. The separation proves to
be no less harmful to the other side. The state separated from
the Church either gives up spiritual interests altogether, loses its
supreme consecration and dignity, as well as the moral respect and
the material submission of its subjects, or, conscious of the
importance of the spiritual interests for the life of man, but, in its
separation from the Church, having no competent and independent
institution to which it could entrust the supreme care of the
spiritual good of its subjects, — the task of preparing the nations for
the Kingdom of God, — it decides to take that task upon itself.

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 459

To do so consistently the state would have to assume ex officio the
supreme spiritual authority — which would be a mad and dangerous
usurpation recalling the ' man of lawlessness ' of the last days. It
is clear that in forgetting its filial attitude towards the Church,
the state would be acting in its own name, and not in the name
of the Father.

The normal relation, then, between the state and the
Church is this. The state recognises the supreme spiritual authority
of the universal Church^ which indicates the general direction of
the goodwill of mankind and the final purpose of its historical
activity. The Church leaves to the state full power to bring lawful
worldly interests into conformity with this supreme will and to har
monise political relations and actions with the requirements of this
supreme purpose. The Church must have no power of compulsion^ and
the power of compulsion exercised by the state must have nothing to do
with the domain of religion.

The state is the intermediary social sphere between the Church
on the one hand and the material society on the other. The
absolute aims of religious and moral order which the Church puts
before humanity and which it represents, cannot be realised in the
given human material without the formal mediation of the lawful
authority of the state (in the worldly aspect of its activity), which
retains the forces of evil within certain relative bounds until the
time comes when all human wills are ready to make the decisive
choice between the absolute good and the unconditional evil.
The direct and fundamental motive of such restraint is pity, which
determines the whole progress of legal justice and of the state.
The progress is not in the principle, but in its application. Com
pulsion exercised by the state draws back before individual freedom
and comes forward to help in the case of public distress. The
rule of true progress is t'nis^ that the state should interfere as little as
possible with the inner moral life of man, and at the same time should
as securely and as widely as possible ensure the external conditions of
his worthy existence and moral development. The state which chose
on its own authority to teach its subjects true theology and sound
philosophy, and at the same time allowed them to remain illiterate,
to be murdered on the high-roads, or to die of famine and of
infection, would lose its raison d'etre. The voice of the true
Church might well say to such a state : " It is I that am entrusted

460 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

with the spiritual salvation of these men. All that thou are
required to do is to have pity on their worldly difficulties and
frailties. It is written that man does not live by bread alone, but
it is not written that he lives without bread. Pity is binding upon
all, and upon me also. If, therefore, thou wilt not be the collective
organ of my pity, and wilt not, by rightly dividing our labour,
make it morally possible for me to devote myself to the work of
piety, I will once more have to set myself to do the work of
pity, as I have done in the old days when thou, the state, wast
not yet called Christian. I will myself have to see that there
should be no famine and excessive labour, no sick uncared for, that
the injured should receive reparation, and injurers be corrected.
But will not then all men say : What need have we of the state,
which has no pity for us, since we have a Church which took
pity on our bodies as well as on our souls ? " The Christian state,
worthy of this name, is one which, without interfering in ecclesi
astical affairs, acts within its own domain in the kingly spirit of
Christ, who pitied the sick and the hungry, taught the ignorant,
forcibly restrained abuses (driving out the money-changers), was
kind to the Samaritans and the Gentiles, and forbade his disciples
to use violence against unbelievers.

XVIII

Just as the fundamental moral motive of piety, determining
our right attitude to the absolute principle, is organised in the
Church, and the other ultimate moral principle, that of pity,
determining our right attitude to our neighbours, is organised in
the state, so with reference to the third essential aspect of human
life our moral relation to the lower nature (our own and that of
others) is organised objectively and in a collective form in society
as an economic union or zemstvo.

The moral duty of abstinence based as a fact upon the feeling
of shame inherent in human nature, is the true principle of the
economic life of humanity and of the corresponding social organisa
tion, so far as its own specific task is concerned. The economic
task of the state which acts from motives of pity, is compulsorily
to secure for each a certain minimum of material welfare as the
necessary condition of worthy human existence. This is the right

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 461

solution of the economic question with regard to one aspect of
it, namely, with regard to relations between human beings.
Economic activity as such is, however, vitally concerned with
man's relation to the material nature, and the unconditional
character of the moral principle and the completeness of the moral
order necessarily demand that this relation, too, should be brought
under the norm of the good or of perfection. Humanity must
therefore be morally organised not only in the ecclesiastical and
the political, but also in the specifically economic sphere of rela
tions. And just as between the Church and the state, so between
the three parts of the collective moral organisation there must
be unity without confusion and distinction without separation.

What form must, then, the good assume in the materially-
economic society as such ? It is understood, of course, that
moral philosophy can do no more than indicate what the informing
principle and the final end of such a society ought to be. This
principle is abstinence from the evil of inordinate carnality ; this
end is the transmutation of the material nature, both of our own
and of that external to us, into the free form of the human spirit,
a form which does not limit it from without, but unconditionally
completes its inward and external existence.

But what is there in common, it will be asked, between
these ideas and the economic reality whose principle is the infinite
multiplication of wants and whose end is an equally infinite multi
plication of things that satisfy these wants. Shame and shameless-
ness, spiritualisation of the body and materialisation of the soul,
resurrection of the flesh and death of the spirit, certainly do have
something in common, but the common element is purely negative.
This, however, is of no importance. The fact that a moral norm
is rejected does not abolish, but, on the contrary, brings out its
inner significance. There is no rational ground for supposing
that the economic life corresponds to the ideal from the first in
a way in which neither the Church nor the state in their empirical
reality correspond to it. There undoubtedly is a certain op
position between the feeling of shame and the operations on the
stock exchange, but the opposition is certainly not any greater,
and perhaps is even less than that between real Christian piety and
the policy of the mediaeval Church. There is a lack of correspond
ence between the principle of abstinence and money speculations,

462 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

but again it is not any greater, and, indeed, is less great than that
between the principle of the state as based upon justice and
morality and the institution of lettres de cachet^ the dragonnades or
the wholesale expulsions of persons belonging to a different religion.
On the strength of what has happened and of what happens still,
one may think that the whole of the economic sphere is simply
the field for greed and self-interest, just as for some people the
whole significance of religion and the Church is summed up by
the ambition of the clergy and the superstitiousness of the masses,
and for others the political world contains nothing but tyranny of
the rulers and blind submissiveness of the crowd. Such views, no
doubt, exist, but they are due either to a desire to misunderstand
the true meaning of things, or to incapacity to understand it. The
following argument is of more weight. Even if we give up the
immediate demand for the ideal of perfection in human relations,
we still ought to insist upon two things before we recognise that
the relations in question have any moral worth or significance,
(i) The moral principle said to be involved in them must not be
altogether foreign to them, but must show itself in them, even if
in an imperfect way only. (2) In their historical development
they must approximate to the norm or become more perfect.
But the economic life, if it is taken as a certain organisation of
the material relations, does not in any way satisfy these two
necessary demands. In spite of all possible abuses in the ecclesi
astical sphere, it could not be seriously denied that the moral
principle of piety is inherent in the Church. It could not, for
instance, be denied that the temples of God are, generally
speaking, erected owing to the feeling of piety, and that the
majority of people coming to the services are moved by it. It
could not be denied, either, that in some, if not in all, respects the
life of the Church is improving, and that many of the old abuses
have now become impossible. In a similar way no just man will
deny that state institutions — law courts, police, schools, hospitals,
etc. — are intended for the moral purpose of defending men from
injuries and calamities and of promoting their welfare, nor that
the means of attaining that purpose by the state are gradually
improving in the sense of becoming more merciful. But in the
economic realm there exists no institution which serves of
objective expression to the virtue of abstinence and helps to

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 463

spiritualise the material nature. The moral principle by which our
material life ought to be determined, and our external environment
transformed, has no reality whatever in the domain of the economic
relations, and, therefore, there is in that domain nothing to improve.

This complete separation of the economic life from its own
moral purpose is unquestionably a fact, but from our point of
view it can be satisfactorily explained. The moral organisation
of humanity, the principle of which was given in the Christian
religion, could not be equally realised in all its parts. A certain
historical successiveness followed from the very nature of the case.
The religious task, the organisation of piety in the Church, was
bound to occupy the foremost place, both because it was the
most essential and, in a sense, the simplest thing, and the least
conditioned by man. Indeed, man's relation to the uncon
ditional principle revealed to him cannot be determined by any
thing other than that principle itself, since nothing can be
higher than it ; the relation rests upon its own foundation, upon
what is given. The second task of the moral organisation —
the task of the Christian state — is, in addition to the motive
of collective pity, also conditioned by the supreme religious
principle which liberates that worldly pity from the limitations
it had in the heathen state. And we see that the political task
of historical Christianity, more complex and conditioned than
the religious one, comes on the scene subsequently to the latter.
There was a period in the Middle Ages when the Church
acquired definite organic forms, while the Christian state was in the
same condition of apparent non-existence as the Christian economic
life is to-day. The right of the fist, which was predominant in
the Middle Ages, no more corresponded to the ideal of the state
than modern banks and stock exchanges correspond to the ideal
of economic relations. Practical realisation of the latter is natur
ally the last in the order of time since the economic sphere is the
furthest limit for the application of the moral principle. Its
rightful organisation, i.e. the establishment of the moral relation
between man and material nature, is inevitably conditioned in
two ways : first, by the normal religious attitude of humanity
organised in the Church j and, secondly, by the normal inter-
human or altruistic relations organised in the state.

It is no wonder, therefore, that the true economic problem to

464 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

which some socialists of the first half of the nineteenth century
vaguely groped their way, and from which modern socialists are
as far removed as their opponents, has not yet received a stable
and definite expression even in theory.

But however indefinite the last practical task may be, the
changes in the moral sentiments that predominated in the history of
the Christian world point with sufficient clearness to three main
epochs. The epoch of piety was characterised by its exclusive
interest for the c divine,' its indifference and distrust of the human
element, its hostility and fear of the physical nature. This first
epoch, in spite of its stability and long duration, contained in itself
a seed of destruction : the spirit of the one-sided, intolerant piety
of the Middle Ages was regarded as the absolute norm. When
this contradiction found its direct and extreme expression in the
inhuman and pitiless religious persecutions inspired by c piety,'
there was a reaction which found its first expression in idealistic
humanism, and then showed itself in works of practical pity and
mercy. This movement of human morality characteristic of the
second epoch of the Christian history — from the fifteenth to the
nineteenth century inclusive — began to pass in the course of that
century into a third stage. Two preliminary truths appeared in
the living consciousness of mankind. The first is that if mercy
is to be fully carried out it must include the domain of the
material ///£, and the second is that the norm of the material
life is continence. To the philosophers this truth was clear in
times of antiquity, but it has not yet -shed its light upon the
general consciousness for which it is but vaguely beginning to dawn.
A glimmer of it can unquestionably be seen in the nineteenth
century in such phenomena as the ascetic morality of the fashion
able philosopher Schopenhauer, the spread of vegetarianism, the
popularity of Hinduism and Buddhism which, though badly under
stood, are taken precisely on their ascetic side ; the success of the
1 Kreuzer SonataJ the fear of the good people lest the preaching
of continence might lead to a sudden cessation of the human
race, etc.

Economic relations and asceticism are the two apparently wholly
heterogeneous orders of facts and ideas, which, in the beginning of
the nineteenth century, were brought together in a perfectly crude
and external way by Malthusianism. The inner and essential con-

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 465

nection between them consists in the positive duty of man to save
material nature from the necessity of death and decay ^ and to prepare it
for universal bodily resurrection.

XIX

It is generally believed that the purpose of the economic
activity is the increase of wealth. But the purpose of wealth
itself — unless one adopts the point of view of the l avaricious
knight ' — is to possess the fulness of physical existence. This fulness
no doubt depends upon man's relation to the material nature, and
here two ways are open before us. We can either selfishly exploit
the earthly nature or lovingly cultivate it. The first way has already
been tried, and although it has been of some indirect benefit to
the intellectual development of man and to the external human
culture, the main purpose cannot be attained by it. Nature yields
to man on the surface, gives him the semblance of dominion over
her, but the fictitious treasures, won bv violence, bring no happi
ness and scatter in the wind like burnt-up cinders. By means of
external exploitation of the powers of the earth man cannot secure
that which is essential to his material welfare, — he cannot, that is,
heal his physical life and render it immortal. And he cannot
possess nature from within, for its true substance is unknown to
him. But in virtue of his reason and conscience he knows the
moral conditions, lying within his own control, which may place
him in the right relation to nature. Reason reveals to him
that every real fact or event is subject to the undefeasible law
of the conservation of energy. Carnal desires seek to bind
the soul to the surface of nature, to the material things and
processes, and to turn the inner potential infinity of the human
being into the evil external boundlessness of passions and lusts.
Conscience even in its elementary form of shame condemns this
path as unworthy^ and reason shows that it is perilous. The
more the soul expends itself outwardly, upon the surface of
things, the less inner force it has left for penetrating to
the inmost substance of nature and taking possession of it.
It is clear that man can truly spiritualise nature, that is, call
forth and develop its inner life, only by his own overflowing
spirituality ; and it is equally clear that man himself can only

2 H

466 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

become spiritualised at the expense of his external, outwardly
directed mental powers and desires. The powers and desires of
the soul must be drawn within and, through this, increase in
intensity. And the inwardly concentrated, powerful and spiritual
ised being of man will be in communion with the inner substance
of nature and no longer with its material surface.

What is required is not that man should give up externally
acting upon nature and carrying on the work of civilisation, but
that he should change the purpose of his life and the centre of
gravity of his will. External objects which most men passionately
seek as ends in themselves, expending upon them their inner
powers of feeling and will, must entirely become the means and
the instruments, while the inner forces gathered and concentrated
within must be used as a powerful lever to lift the weight of the
material being which crushes both the scattered soul of man and
the divided soul of nature.

The normal principle of the economic activity is economy — the saving^
the collecting of psychical forces by means of transmuting one species of
mental energy (the external or extensive"] into another kind of energy
(the internal or the intensive]. Man either scatters his sensuous
soul or he gathers it together. In the first case he achieves
nothing either for himself or for nature, in the second he heals
and saves both himself and it. Speaking generally, organisation
signifies that the means and instruments of the lower order are
co-ordinated for the attainment of one general purpose of a higher
order. Therefore the principle of economic activity that has
hitherto been dominant — the indefinite multiplication of the ex
ternal and particular wants, and the recognition of the external
means of satisfying them as ends in themselves — is the principle
of disorganisation, of social decomposition, while the principle of
moral philosophy — the collecting and the drawing in of all the
external material purposes into one inward and mental purpose
of the complete reunion of the human being with the sub
stance of nature, is the principle of organisation and universal
resuscitation.

It must be remembered, however, that this task is third in the
order of time in the general moral organisation of humanity, and
that the real solution of it is conditioned by the first two. The
practice of personal asceticism can be normal and rational only on

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 467

condition of a pious attitude to God and pity to men. If this
were not so, the devil would be the pattern of asceticism. In a
similar manner the collective organisation of the materiallife of
man in accordance with the principle of gathering the inner forces
and restraining the outer wants, cannot be rightly and success
fully carried out by isolated agents in the economic realm taken
by itself. It involves the recognition of the absolute purpose
— the Kingdom of God — represented by the Church, and requires
the help of the rightful methods of state organisation. Neither
the individual nor the collective man can introduce normal order
into his material life apart from his religion and his relation to
other men.

Moral organisation of the human race or its regeneration into
the divine humanity is an indivisible threefold process. Its absolute
purpose is laid down by the Church as the organised piety, collec
tively receptive of the Divine grace ; its formal means and instru
ments are supplied by the purely human, free principle of just pity
or sympathy, collectively organised in the state ; and it is only the
ultimate substratum or the material body of the God-in-man that
is found in the economic life, determined by the principle of
continence.

XX

The individual factor is, from the nature of the case, inevitably
involved in the social or the collective aspect of the moral organisa
tion of humanity. It is only in and through the activity of the
individual bearers of the supreme principles of life that humanity
increases in perfection, or is morally organised in the various
aspects of its existence. The unity, the completeness, and the
right direction of the general moral progress depend upon a har
monious co-operation of the leading or 'representative' individuals.
The normal relation between the state and the Church would find
its essential condition and visible real embodiment in the abiding
harmony of their supreme representatives, the high priest and the
king. The power of the king would be consecrated by the
authority of the priest, and the authoritative will of the latter would
only find expression through the fulness of the power of the former.
The high priest of the Church, the direct bearer of the Divine

468 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

principle, the representative of the spiritual parentage^ the father by
pre-eminence, ought, every time that he is tempted to abuse his
authority by turning it into a power of compulsion, to remember
the words of the gospel that the Father judges no one, but has
passed all judgment to the Son, for he is the Son of man. The
Christian king, pre-eminently the son of the Church, when
tempted to raise his supreme temporal power to the level of the
highest spiritual authority, and allow it to interfere with the
affairs of religion and conscience, ought in his turn to remember
that even the King of Heaven does the will of the Father.

The authority of the high priest, as well as the power of the
king, are, however, inevitably connected with external advan
tages, and are open to temptations that may prove too strong.
Disputes, encroachments and misunderstandings are bound to
arise, and they obviously cannot be finally settled by one of the
interested parties. All external limitations are, as a matter of
principle or of ideal, incompatible with the supreme dignity of the
pontifical authority and of the royal power. But a purely moral
control over them on the part of the free forces of the nation and
society is both possible and extremely desirable. In the old Israel
there had existed a third supreme calling, that of the prophet.
Abolished by Christianity in theory, it practically disappeared from
the stage of history, and came forward in exceptional cases only,
for the most part in a distorted form. Hence all the anomalies of
mediaeval and modern history. The restoration of the pro
phetic calling does not rest with the will of man, but a reminder
of its purely moral significance is very opportune in our day, and
is appropriate at the end of an exposition of moral philosophy.

Just as the high priest of the Church is the highest expression
of piety, and the Christian monarch the highest expression of
mercy and truth, so the true prophet is the highest expression of
shame and conscience. This inner nature of the prophetic calling
determines its external characteristics. The true prophet is a
social worker who is absolutely independent, and neither fears, nor
submits to, anything external. Side by side with the representatives
of absolute authority and absolute power there must be in human
society representatives of absolute freedom. Such freedom cannot
belong to the crowd, cannot be an attribute of democracy. Every
one, of course, desires to have moral freedom, as every one, perhaps,

MORAL ORGANISATION OF HUMANITY 469

might wish to have the supreme authority and power ; but desiring
is not enough. The supreme authority and power are given by the
grace of God j the true freedom man must deserve for himself by self-
renunciation. The right to be free follows from the very nature of
man and must be externally safeguarded by the state. But the
degree to which this right may be realised entirely depends upon
inner conditions, upon the level of the moral consciousness. The
man who has complete freedom, both external and inward, is one
who is not inwardly bound by anything external, and in the last
resort knows of no other standard of judgment and conduct than
the good will and the pure conscience.

The high priest is the coping-stone of a numerous and complex
hierarchy of the clergy, through which he comes into contact with
the whole of the laity ; the king carries out his work among the
people through a complex system of civil and military institutions
represented by individual men ; in a similar manner the free
followers of the supreme ideal realise it in the life of the community
through a number of men who more or less fully participate in
their aspirations. The three services can be best distinguished
by the fact that the office of the priest derives its main force
from pious devotion to the true traditions of the past ; the office
of the king — from a correct understanding of the true needs of
the present and the office of the prophet, from the faith in the
true vision of the future. The difference between the prophet
and the idle dreamer lies in the fact that in the case of the prophet
the flowers and fruits of the ideal future do not hang in the air of
personal imagination, but are supported by the visible stem of the
present social needs and by the mysterious roots of religious
tradition. And it is this same fact that connects the calling of
the prophet with the office of priest and king.

CONCLUSION

THE FINAL DEFINITION OF THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE
AND THE TRANSITION TO THE THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY

OUR life acquires moral worth and significance when, through
striving after perfection, it becomes related to the perfect good.
It follows from the very conception of the perfect good that all
life and all existence are connected with it. There is meaning in
the animal life, in its functions of nourishment and reproduction.
But this meaning, important and unquestionable as it is, ex
presses only an involuntary and partial connection of a particular
being with the universal good, and cannot satisfy the life of man ;
his will and his reason, being forms of the infinite, demand
something more. The spirit is nurtured by the knowledge of the
perfect good and is propagated by doing good, by realising, that
is, the unconditional and universal in all the particular con
ditions and relations. In inwardly demanding a perfect union with
the absolute good we show that that which is demanded by us
has not yet been given us, and that, therefore, the moral signi
ficance of our life can only consist in approaching the perfect
association with the good or in rendering perfect our actual inner
connection with it.

The demand for moral perfection involves the general idea of
the absolute good and of its necessary attributes. It must be all-
embracing, that is, it must be the criterion of our moral relation
to all things. All that exists or may exist is from the moral point
of view exhausted by three categories : it is either above us, or
on a level with us, or below us. It is logically impossible to find a
fourth relation. Our inner consciousness testifies that above us
is the absolute good or God and that which already is in perfect
union with Him, a union we have not yet attained ; on a level with

470

THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE 471

us is everything which, like ourselves, is capable of spontaneously
increasing in moral perfection, everything which, like us, is on the
way to the absolute, and can conceive the purpose of its action, — that
is, all human beings ; below us is all that is incapable of inward
spontaneous perfection and that can enter through us only into
a perfect relation with the absolute — namely, material nature.
This threefold relation in its most general form is a fact. We
are, as a fact, subordinate to the absolute, by whatever name we
might describe it. We are, as a fact, equal to other men in the
essential attributes of human nature, and through heredity, history,
and social life are one with them in our earthly destiny. We
possess, as a fact, important advantages over the material creation.
The moral problem then can only consist in perfecting what is given.
The fact of the threefold relation must be transformed into a
threefold norm of rational and voluntary activity. The inevitable
submission to the supreme power must become the conscious and
free service of the perfect good ; the natural solidarity with other
human beings must be transformed into sympathetic and har
monious co - operation ; the actual advantages we have over
material nature must become rational mastery over it for our good
and its own.

The true beginning of moral progress is contained in the
three fundamental feelings which are inherent in human nature
and constitute natural virtue : the feeling of shame which safe
guards our higher dignity against the encroachments of the
animal desires, the feeling of pity which establishes an inner
equality between ourselves and others, and, finally, the religious
feeling which expresses our recognition of the supreme good.
Inseparable from these feelings is the consciousness, even though
it be a dim one, that they are the norm, and express what is
good, while the opposite of them is bad — the consciousness
that one ought to be ashamed of immoderate physical desires and
slavery to the animal nature, that one ought to pity others, ought
to do homage to the Divine. These feelings, representing the good
nature which strives from the first towards that which ought to be,
and the testimony of conscience that accompanies them constitute
the one or rather the three-intone foundation of moral progress.
Conscientious reason generalises the impulses of the good nature and
makes them into a law. The content of the moral law is that

472 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

which is given in the good feelings, but it is clothed in the form
of a universal and binding demand or imperative. Moral law
grows out of the testimony of conscience, and conscience itself
is the feeling of shame developed on its formal and not on its
material side.

With regard to our lower nature the moral law, generalising
the immediate feeling of modesty, commands us always to dominate
all sensual desires, admitting them only as a subordinate element
within the limits of reason ; morality at this stage no longer takes
the form — as in the elementary feeling of shame — of the mere
instinctive rejection of the hostile element or recoiling before
it, but demands actual struggle with the flesh. With regard to
other human beings, the moral law gives to the feeling of pity or
sympathy the form of justice, and demands that we should recog
nise each of our neighbours as having the same absolute signifi
cance as ourselves, or that we should regard others as we could
consistently wish them to regard us, independently of this or that
particular feeling. Finally, in relation to the Deity the moral
law affirms itself as the expression of Its law-giving will, and
demands that that will should be unconditionally recognised for
the sake of its own dignity or perfection. But when this pure
recognition of God's will as the all-embracing and all-sufficient
good has been attained, it must be clear that the fulness of this
will can only be revealed through its own inner effects in the soul
of man. Having risen to this level, the formal or rational
morality enters the domain of the absolute morality — the good of
the rational law is completed by the good of the Divine grace.

According to the usual teaching of true Christianity, which
correctly represents the position, grace does not abolish nature
and natural morality but 'perfects' it, that is, brings it to perfec
tion ; in like manner grace does not abolish law, but fulfils it,
and only in so far as it does so, renders it unnecessary.

The fulfilment of the moral law, whether instinctive or
deliberate, cannot, however, be limited to the personal life of
the individual — for two reasons, a natural and a moral one. The
natural reason is that the individual taken separately does not
exist at all. From the point of view of practice this reason is
quite sufficient, but strict moralists who care not for what is but
for what ought to be will attach greater weight to the moral

THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE 473

reason — to the incompatibility, namely, between the idea of a
separate isolated man and the idea of moral perfection. On
natural and moral grounds the process of attaining perfection,
which constitutes the moral significance of our life, can only
be conceived as a collective process, taking place in the collec
tive man, that is, in the family, in the nation, in humanity.
These three aspects of the collective man do not replace but
mutually support and complete one another, each following its
own path towards perfection. Perfection is being attained by the
family which spiritualises and preserves for eternity the significance
of the individual past in and through the moral bond with the
forefathers, the significance of the real present in true marriage
and the significance of the individual future in the upbringing of
new generations. Perfection is being attained by the nation,
which deepens and extends its natural solidarity with other nations
by entering into moral communion with them. Perfection is
being attained by humanity which organises the good in the
general forms of the religious, political, and social -economic
culture, rendering them more and more conformable to the
final end — the preparation of humanity for the unconditional
moral order, or the kingdom of God. Religious good or piety
is organised in the Church which seeks to make its human
aspect more perfect by making it more and more conformable to
the Divine. The inter-human good or justice and pity is organised
in the State which grows more perfect by extending the domain
of justice and mercy at the expense of violence and arbitrariness
both within the nation and between nations. The physical good
or man's moral relation to material nature is organised in the
economic union, the perfection of which consists not in the
accumulation of things, but in the spiritualisation of matter as the
condition of normal and eternal existence in the physical world.

Constant interaction between personal moral effort and the
organised moral work of collective man finally justifies the moral
significance of life — that is, it justifies the good, which thus appears
in all its purity, fulness, and power. The system of moral philo
sophy worked out in the present book is a conceptual reproduction
of this process in its totality ; it follows history in what has been
attained already, and anticipates it in what is still left to be done.
In reducing its contents to one formula we shall find that the

474 THE JUSTIFICATION OF THE GOOD

perfection of the good finally shows itself as the inseverable
organisation of a threefold love. The feeling of reverence or piety,
which means at first a timid and involuntary and then a free and
filial submission to the supreme principle, conies to know its
object as absolute perfection, and is transformed into a pure, all-
embracing, and boundless love for it, conditioned solely by the
recognition of its absolute character — an ascending love. In con
formity with its all-embracing object this love includes all else in
God, and, in the first place, those who, like us, can participate in
it, i.e. human beings. Our physical and subsequently our moral
and political pity for men becomes a spiritual love for them, or an
equalising love. But the Divine and all-embracing love to which
man attains does not stop at this j becoming a descending love it
acts upon material nature, bringing it also within the fulness of
the absolute good, making it the living throne of the Divine
glory.

When this universal justification of the good, its extension to
all the relations of life, is clearly seen as a historical fact by every
mind, the only question for the individual will be the practical
question of will, — to accept this perfect moral significance of life
for oneself, or to reject it. But as long as the end has not yet
come, as long as the Tightness of the good has not become self-
evident in all things and to all, further theoretical doubt is still
possible. That doubt cannot be solved within the limits of
moral or practical philosophy, although it in no way detracts from
the binding character of its maxims upon men of good will.

If the moral significance of life in the last resort consists in
the struggle with evil and in the triumph of good over evil, there
arises the eternal question as to the origin of evil itself. If evil
springs from the good, struggle with it seems to be based upon a
misconception ; if it arises independently of the good, the good
cannot be unconditional, since the condition of its realisation will
be external to it. And if the good is not unconditional, wherein
does its essential superiority consist, and what is the final guarantee
of its triumph over evil ?

Rational faith in the absolute good is based upon inner
experience, and upon that which with logical necessity follows
from it. But inner religious experience is a personal matter,
and, from the external point of view, is conditional. When,

THE MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF LIFE 475

therefore, rational faith based upon it becomes a system of uni
versal theoretic assertions, it must be theoretically justified.

The question as to the origin of evil is purely intellectual,
and can be solved by a true metaphysic alone, which, in its turn,
presupposes the solution of the question as to the nature, the
validity, and the means of knowing the truth.

The independence of moral philosophy in its own sphere does
not prevent it from being inwardly connected with theoretical
philosophy — the theory of knowledge and metaphysics.

It least of all befits believers in the absolute good to fear
philosophical investigation, as if the moral significance of the
world could lose by being finally explained, and as though union
with God in love, and harmony with His will, could leave us no
part in the Divine intellect. Having justified the good as such
in moral philosophy, we must, in theoretical philosophy, justify
the good as Truth.

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